Dolls Behaving Badly (9 page)

“Get on your coat,” I whispered. “Laurel’s sick.”

“Hank’s a stupid name,” he complained on the way home.

“It is,” I agreed, keeping watch for an open restaurant or a fast-food joint. I was starving. I needed protein.

“Mom, don’t get mad, okay, but Uncle Junior has dirty magazines in the bathroom,” Jay-Jay said excitedly. “Under the good
towels.”

“You should have stayed downstairs.” I pulled into an espresso stand and ordered two sandwiches, hot chocolates, and banana
muffins. I rummaged around my purse for money but found only Kleenex and a hunk of Killer Bee’s chew bone.

“Aunt Laurel had clothes all over the place,” Jay-Jay said. “And a shoe in the sink. A blue shoe, Mom. In the
sink
.”

“That’s why you stuffed toilet paper in your sock?” I wrote out a check I knew I couldn’t cover.

Jay-Jay shrugged and rooted around the bag for his share. “It made me feel better.”

I handed my tainted check to the unsmiling woman and as we drove away, I imagined toilet paper stuffed inside my own socks.
The rustle of paper against my ankles would be reassuring, like an itch or a scratch. Like someone touching me when I didn’t
realize I needed to be touched.

Monday, Nov. 28

“Charity isn’t about giving money to the poor as much as giving to others,” the Oprah Giant wrote in today’s blog. “When you
give what you have the least of, you are giving the most.”

This was a relief to me, since I didn’t have much to begin with. I was busy listing the few good deeds I had done over the
years when Laurel stormed in.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” she demanded.

“I have a dentist appointment later this afternoon.”

“I’ll just leave you a Post-it note then.” She shuffled around the junk drawer. “Don’t you at least have one goddamned Post-it?”

I gawked at her in amazement. Laurel never swears; she says it shows poor taste. “Can’t you just tell me?”

She sat down at the table and mumbled.

“What?” I covered my diary with my hand so she couldn’t peek.

“The clinic,” Laurel said. “I need the name.”

I kept writing; I had no idea what she was talking about. “In Arizona,” she continued. “The one—”

“The abortion clinic?” I was incredulous. “You’re pregnant? But you’re a Republican.”

“I
know
that,” Laurel sobbed.

“But…” I couldn’t imagine Laurel doing anything as messy as having an abortion. She wouldn’t have the strength to push her
way through the protesters. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I
am
. I’m late. Two weeks.” She sounded offended. “A woman
knows
these things, Carla.”

“You need to get one of those testers,” I told her. “They have them at Carrs and Walmart.”

She looked up at me, her eyes wide. “Oh, Carla, could you get one for me. Please?”

I ran into a man who looked like my high school biology teacher as I waited in the Walmart checkout with Laurel’s pregnancy
test. He glared as if about to ask if I still cheated on homework assignments, but luckily another line opened up and I escaped.
When I got back home, Laurel was huddled in my bed. She stayed there all afternoon and only came out for supper.

We were eating microwaved pancakes, microwaved eggs, and toast with Smucker’s grape jam because Laurel said breakfast food
was the only thing she could stomach.

“You look funny,” Jay-Jay said, examining her.

“I have a terminal illness,” Laurel said.

“Jennifer P’s mother has cancer,” Jay-Jay said. “She’s bald and wears hats from Ecuador.”

“I’m not dying,” Laurel said. “I’m just getting fat.”

“Oh.” Jay-Jay lost interest. “What’s for dessert?”

After we finished I threw the dirty dishes into the sink with a sprinkling of laundry soap, since we were out of dish detergent,
and followed Laurel into the bathroom.

“Read the directions again,” she said.

I read them slowly; then I handed her the plastic tester and started to leave.

“No!” she shouted. “Stay with me.”

I pulled out last month’s
Oprah
magazine from the pile by the toilet, plopped down on the edge of the bathtub, and reread Dr. Phil’s column. His bald head
shone benevolently from the glossy pages.

“I can’t pee,” Laurel moaned, her pants sagging around her ankles. “Nothing’s coming out.”

I ran the water, but that didn’t help.

“Stand out in the hall,” she demanded.

I stood out in the hall and waited.

Finally she called me in and handed me the tester. Pee dripped over the rug as I carried it to the sink. Laurel sat on the
toilet, eyes clenched.

“Don’t tell me if it’s bad, promise?”

I watched the little plus sign slowly darken. I didn’t say anything.

“Say something!” she shouted.

“I, well, I, I mean it might not be…” My voice trailed off.

“Just say it. Spit the fucking words out.”

“You’re pregnant.”

Laurel collapsed on the floor. Her shoulders shook. “Junior is going to kill me. I’ll have nowhere to go.” She looked up at
me, her face drained of all color. “You’ll let me stay here, won’t you, Carla? When Junior kicks me out?”

“That’s not going to happen,” I said. “He’ll be happy to have a child, once he gets used to the idea. I mean, he and Jay-Jay
get along so well, and—”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Her voice was deadly, horribly calm. “It’s Hank’s.”

“Junior doesn’t have to know.” I was shocked by what I was saying, but my words wouldn’t stop. “They look a lot alike, the
same coloring and hair. What difference does it make? You’ll be the one doing all the work.”

“Junior will know.” She laughed hysterically. “He’ll definitely know. Junior can’t have kids. He had testicular cancer when
he was young. He’s totally sterile.”

“Oh.”

Laurel crouched on the floor and cried and cried. I patted her back, and when that didn’t help, I did what I used to do with
Jay-Jay when he was inconsolable. I led her to the rocking chair in the living room, took her in my lap, and rocked her back
and forth, back and forth, her head on my shoulder, her tears wetting my neck.

“There, there, it will be okay,” I murmured in my mother’s voice. “Shhh, now, shhh, honey, it’s okay, it’s all going to be
okay.”

Words of comfort, lies, the things we want to hear, but it worked. Laurel relaxed, her body growing heavier and heavier. Her
hair smelled of lavender shampoo, and her chin dug against my collarbone, but I didn’t stop. I kept rocking.

Wednesday, Nov. 30

Gramma would have loved Alaska in the winter. She loved the nights; she said the dark was for secrets, that we all had something
we were afraid or unwilling to share.

“Every secret a lie,” she said. “You keep them in your pocket, you don’t show nobody. That make it a lie.”

I had many secrets: That I wanted to be an artist but was afraid to try. That I wanted to quit my job but was afraid there
was nothing better for me out there. That I wanted to be touched but was afraid to let anyone get close enough to try. I wanted
a man (Francisco?) to walk up to me, slip his hand across my back, and smile, like a scene from a sappy movie. I wanted to
lay my head against his chest and smell his familiar smells. I wanted the security of knowing that I would be touched, not
fucked, like what Barry and I did, but touched in a way that said my body was sacred to one person on this earth.

Late at night Gramma used to tell stories of her sister who had been lost in the war.

“She just fifteen,” Gramma said, wiping tears from her eyes, and for some reason I imagined an empty toy store, dusty racks
and shelves stretching on forever as her sister wandered by herself, her socks falling down, her dress torn and damp like
the character from the
Little Match Girl
movie we watched every Christmas.

Gramma made sad pastries when she told her late-night stories, rolling out the dough and cutting big circles with the rim
of a metal cup, then folding over the dough and pinching it closed with the edges of a fork. She usually cried when she made
these; she talked about her sister and wiped her eyes on her apron and kept right on baking. She insisted that the tears were
what made the pastries so light and sweet.

“The tongue,” she said, “needs a taste of sadness to keep it from falling out.”

Sunday, Dec. 4

JAY-JAY ATE GENERIC CORNFLAKES
while reading from his school report on Egyptian mummy facts.

“…hook up the nose and then they pulled the brains out.” He slurped cheerfully. “They had to be real careful or they’d mess
up the face. And Mom?”

“Yes?” I gritted my teeth and scrubbed a dish with my fingernails.

“They used natron to dry out the body. It’s this kind of salt that sucks all the moisture from the skin.” He made a loud sucking
noise with his mouth.

“That’s nice.” It had been a rough morning. I finally gathered the courage to open last week’s mail only to discover that
even after the extra push from my Saturday night shift, I was
still
behind on the electric, phone, and car insurance bills. To top it off, there was a pale yellow envelope from Mother. I haven’t
written about my mother much. I suppose I’ve been avoiding it. She sends letters every few weeks, badly typed and reeking
of Lysol air freshener. This letter was typical in that it both saddened and infuriated me.

My stomach hurt after reading this. Why weren’t we going home for Christmas? Couldn’t we have given Mother this one small
thing, the gift of our presence? Of course, I hadn’t the money to head home and even if I did, I would end up regretting it.
Mother always gets drunk around the holidays, not a slamming-down-the-house drunk but a mournful, soft drunk that leaves her
melancholy. It’s the only time she openly drinks; the rest of the time she hides her bottles in the cupboard behind the cat
food bags.

I clutched the letter in my hand, debating how to answer, when the phone rang. “Can you get that, sweetie?”

Jay-Jay slurped the last of his cereal and ignored me. The phone rang a third time, and then a fourth. “Everyone I know texts,”
he said. “Only old people use the phone.”

The answering machine whirled and a deep voice entered the room. “Carlita? It’s Francisco. I think this is you. I have, let
me see, four, no, five, calls from this number and I thought: Who would call and listen to me breathe? For some reason I thought
of you. Plus you look like someone who would have a kid named Jay-Jay and—”
Click!
The machine mercifully cut him off in midsentence.

“Francisco?” Jay-Jay squinted at me with sudden interest. “A guy’s calling you? Guys never call you.”

“He’s just a customer from work. He orders, uh, verde enchilada with extra pico de gallo sauce.” I couldn’t stop talking.
“Sometimes he gets a side of whole black beans, but not usually.”

“Oh.” Jay-Jay stared at me closely. “Your face is all splotchy.”

I held up the letter. “Grampa’s gerbil died.”

“He e-mailed me. Gramma wrote too but kept calling me Gene. I think she was drunk.”

“She means well,” I said quickly. “She loves you more than—”

“Can I go over to Alan’s? We’re making a duct-tape semiconductor.”

“Brush your teeth first,” I said, but he was already out the door. I reached down and stroked Killer’s bony head and thought
about calling Francisco and actually speaking, but knew I wouldn’t. The next time he came into work, I’d trade tables with
Sandee. I couldn’t wait on him now. I felt exposed, as if he knew how lonely I was inside, how needy and weak and scared.

Naturally, the Oprah Giant picked today to blog about love. “Think about having all the love you want,” she wrote, and the
type was pink, with little hearts at the end of each sentence. “How would that feel?”

“Like shit,” I answered. I wasn’t sure I wanted love. Or happiness. My misery was my comfort zone, as safe and bland as vanilla
pudding. Which is what I’m eating as I write this entry, Pudding Pals, a generic offshoot of Jell-O Pudding Cups, which I
can’t afford. I can’t afford love, either. Thinking about love makes me want to go shopping. There is so much I need! Sexy
underpants and push-up bras, skirts that swish against my thighs and gold chains that draw attention to my collarbone.

Of course, the giantess didn’t mention lingerie or toenail polish; she was talking about deep love, the kind where looks don’t
matter and cotton underwear works just fine and you don’t have to shave your legs every night because what you’re after is
the shape of each other’s souls.

“Real love is sharing the ugly, selfish parts of yourself without shame,” she wrote. “It’s less about the red nightie with
the matching G-string and more about the dirty smells leaking out of the laundry hamper.”

I don’t think I could handle a love like that

I think I would run from a love like that.

Monday, Dec. 5

“Laurel’s pregnant,” I said to Barry after he brought Jay-Jay back from an ice-fishing jaunt, both of them dripping over the
kitchen floor.

“Fat guy hogged the good spots,” Barry interrupted. “Didn’t catch a nibble. Jay-Jay says, ‘Why don’t we set up right next
to him?’ but I say that ain’t good etiquette.”

“I
said
Laurel’s pregnant,” I repeated.

“I’m not deaf.”

“Well, you could have answered. You could have at least nodded.”

“My ears are cold.”

“It’s not Junior’s.” I stamped my foot like a child. “Do you get it now?”

“Okay.” His voice was slightly high, the way Jay-Jay’s gets when he’s feeling defensive. “Your sister’s knocked up.”

I didn’t say anything.

“The radio announcer?”

“TV weatherman.”

“Shit.” Barry whistled. “Got any Wheaties? I got me a craving.”

Suddenly, eating made perfect sense. I quickly washed out two bowls (the dirty dishes had stacked up again) and poured us
each cereal. I added milk and sat down across from him. “I don’t know what to do,” I said. “I mean, Laurel with a baby, can
you imagine?”

Barry slurped in agreement, so I continued. “Junior’s sterile, that’s what Laurel said. There’s
no
chance it could be his. None. Jesus, how would you tell someone something like that?

“You don’t.” I slammed my hand down on the table before he could answer. “You can’t. You leave instead.” Barry eyed my bowl
so I pushed it toward him. “Or else you make the other person so miserable that they leave. They can’t stay together now,
that’s for sure, though I can’t imagine them apart.”

I leaned forward until I was practically breathing on Barry. “What would you do if your wife came home pregnant and you knew
it wasn’t yours?”

“I ain’t married,” Barry said.

“I
know
that. But say you were. Say we were still married and we hadn’t had sex for months and then I come home and say, ‘Surprise,
I’m pregnant and it’s not yours.’ Would you hit me?”

“Christ, Carla, that’s a hell of a thing to ask.” He cupped the cereal bowl in his hands and slurped the remaining milk.

“Well?”

“Well what?” He wiped his mouth across his sleeve. “Jesus, I don’t know. Maybe. But we got ourselves Jay-Jay, see. We know
what a kid’s like, how it don’t matter who they belong to, they gradually become yours. Laurel and Junior, they don’t got
that knowledge. But I seen him with Jay-Jay and I thought, ‘There’s a guy that needs a child.’ Maybe this is gonna be his
only chance.”

“So you’d forgive me?”

“Yeah, I suppose.” He scratched his armpit. “But it ain’t about forgiveness when you need something like that.”

Wednesday, Dec. 7

“He had a gap between his front teeth and ordered a bottle of wine, decent vintage but not too pricey, that would have been
tacky.”

Sandee and I stood in the Mexico in an Igloo pantry pretending to wipe down trays. We had fifteen minutes before opening and
were trying to look busy so Mr. Tims wouldn’t assign extra work.

“I was wearing new lipstick,” she continued. “Cranberry Morning, isn’t that a hopeful name? The beginning was good. He took
time to ask me questions. And he had on sandals, Carla, in the middle of winter. His toes were chubby and friendly. I dropped
my napkin twice so I could get a better look.”

Sandee had a theory you could predict a person’s character by the shape of their toes.

“He invited me back to his place and I thought, why not, he seemed nice and he works for fish and game; they do background
checks, you know. We were sitting on his sofa drinking diet soda, all that carbonation was making me feel tipsy but I was
trying not to show it. I could tell he wouldn’t appreciate a slatternly woman. He goes over his history briefly—he was married
seven years ago but seems over it by now—and then I wait for him to start the moves. Nothing happens, so I go over
my
history, muted of course; why scare the poor man off.

“When he got tears in his eyes talking about the baby moose he had to put down last winter, I couldn’t stand it. I grabbed
him by the collar and kissed him hard. He kissed me back and it was nice, he didn’t cram his tongue into my mouth or yank
my breast to pieces. I tingled all over. I don’t think I’ve ever been so swept up by a kiss.

“The next thing you know I’m taking off my dress and standing in front of him in just my bra and panties, good ones too, Nordstrom’s
but on sale. I’m waiting for him to admire me but nothing happens. Finally I squint open one eye and he’s staring at me sadly.

“Put your dress on, honey,” he says. He helps me slide it over my head; I feel like a child being dressed by my mother. His
hands were warm and tender. I started to cry, I don’t know why, but I sat on the floor and cried and cried. He didn’t ask
what was wrong, he…”

Sandee looked at me intently. Her hair was dirty, and she had accidentally put in the wrong contacts, so one eye was blue
and the other green.

“He cupped his hands around my head and held them there. Every so often he gave me little pats. It felt, I don’t know. Tender.”

Her lower lip trembled and I grabbed her hand and squeezed. “I think I love him,” she said. “I can’t remember his last name
so I can’t love him, can I?”

She needed me to tell her no; I could hear it in her voice. I wanted to say that, too. I didn’t want to believe love could
be so easy, so simple. But I think that maybe it is. I think we make it more complicated than it was ever intended to be.

“Maybe,” I began.

“Carla,” Sandee warned.

I coughed because I had to do something to fill the silence, which was thick and anticipatory, the way it often gets when
two people try to talk about love.

Thursday, Dec. 8

“You haven’t told anyone, have you?” Laurel demanded on the phone earlier tonight.

“No.” It wasn’t really a lie since I had only told Barry.

“I made an appointment. At the clinic. Over by the hospital. For next week. Ten days before Christmas.” Laurel laughed harshly.
“What a way. To welcome in. The Christ child.” She seemed unable to talk in complete sentences.

“When?”

“I just said. Next week.” Her voice was tight.

“I meant what time?”

“You coming?” It was more of a challenge than a question.

“You’re my sister,” I said. “Of course I’m coming.”

“Oh, Carly.” Laurel was crying again. “You’d do that? For me? Really?”

By the time she hung up I was exhausted. I thought of my own abortion over eleven years ago, how I sat in the waiting room
unable to meet anyone’s eyes. The room had been clean, almost sterile, with a water fountain in the corner that gave off the
smell of chlorine. I almost bolted. Now I wonder if I should have. What would my life be like if I had an almost twelve-year-old
little girl beside me, legs long like a colt’s? Her hair in pigtails, her fingers dirty, her sneakers colored with green and
pink magic markers. Would I be happier? Would I be married, have a better job, be respectable?

But then I wouldn’t have Jay-Jay, and that thought is unbearable. It’s impossible to think of Jay-Jay not existing; he fills
all the holes of my life. Yet he came with a cost, and that was the abortion. Maybe everything good comes with a cost; maybe
every gift is filled with a trail of hard choices. I wanted to call up Laurel and tell her this but knew she wouldn’t listen.
She was caught in the present and I was speaking from the past—the language barrier was too immense.

I picked up the doll I had been working on, a G.I. Joe fashioned into Superman with a thick dick that came with its own cape,
which doubled as an emergency condom. As I spiked up Superman’s hair, I gave him a couple of tattoos and chiseled out his
ass to give it more definition (maybe this Superman swung both ways—and, really, who could blame him?), all the while wondering
why Laurel hadn’t been using birth control. It was almost as if she wanted it to happen. I was fattening up Superman’s lips
when Stephanie rushed through the door.