Doll Hearts

by Colleen Clayton

  I poke my head into the bathroom and look around.

  Everything is just like I left it.

  I put Lolo back in her cage and then take the longest, hottest shower in the history of showers. When I’m done, I feel loads better. I put on some cut-off sweats and a tee shirt then plug in my dead phone. There are three messages from my dad which means he knows about the incident at school. He probably heard about it from Lindsey’s dad; they’re pretty tight. Before I can listen to the messages, Lindsey phones me. School has let out so she should be home by now.

  “Hey,” I say, and sink back into my pillows.

  She doesn’t even say hello back, just: “Oh-my-god-are-you-okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I say. “What happened after I was wheeled out of the room? Did people laugh?”

  “What? No!” she says. “What, you think our school’s full of sickos? Goofballs and idiots maybe, but not sickos. People were scared for you, Jules.”

  “I couldn’t think straight when it was happening. It felt like people were laughing.”

  “No, I promise you, no one was laughing. Quite the opposite. Poor Brandon Wright, he was white as a sheet after they rolled you out. I had to make him sit down; I thought he was going to pass out, too,” then she pauses, her voice gets a smirk to it. “I offered him a squirt of your icing. He declined.”

  This makes me laugh a little. Then I think about the icing and wonder where she got it. I didn’t have icing in my bag. Maybe she got it from my locker?

  “Yeah, about that. I’m not sure what would have happened if…,” I don’t finish the sentence but move on to, “How did you get the icing out of my locker so fast? You don’t even have the combination.”

  She pauses.

  “It’s mine,” she says. “I carry a tube in my bag in case you forget.”

  The thought of this makes my eyes prick with tears. I blink them back and try not to cry about the fact that Lindsey Rourke, my best friend since the womb, who I callously betrayed in seventh grade because I wanted to be popular for five minutes, carries a tube of strawberry-flavored icing gel in her bag in case I forget.

  I want to say something nice, something that will let her know how much I love and appreciate her, but what comes out is: “I’m sorry I called you Rourke the Dork in seventh grade and wouldn’t sit by you at lunch.”

  She laughs, “Yeah, I know. You’ve apologized for that a million times. And I’ve forgiven you a hundred million times.”

  She’s rolling her eyes, I can feel it through the phone.

  “Well, thanks. I owe you one.”

  “Sure.”

  Then I remember my dad’s messages that I haven’t checked yet.

  “Hey, did your dad call my dad? Because, there’s like three messa—,”

  My sentence is interrupted by loud voices coming from downstairs.

  “Linz, I gotta go. I’ll call you back,” I say.

  I hurry out of my room to see what’s going on. My heart is in my throat because we never have guests. Besides my mom and me, no other human being has been in our house in over four years. My mom and I, we’re very careful about that. Lindsey and a couple of my other friends used to ask about it, why they couldn’t sleep over, but after enough lame excuses on my part, they eventually just dropped it.

  As I make way down the stairs, I can hear the yelling more clearly. I know who it is and it is the worst possible scenario.

  My dad is here.

  He is inside our wreck of a house.

  My dad hasn’t been inside the house since I was twelve. His marriage to my step-mother was the death blow for all civil co-parenting on my mother’s part. When he remarried, my mom pretty much drew a line on the walkway out front with the words: DO NOT CROSS written on it and the friendly post-divorce chitchat that used to bookend my visitations with him came to a halt. My mom can barely stand to hear his name now.

  I am unsure how he got here from Middle Bass so fast and then made it past the door but from the sound of their voices, my dad is not in the house by invitation. Pinballing through the tunnel, I try to be careful but because I’m hurrying, am toppling boxes left and right. The yelling gets louder.

  “What in God’s name happened here, Christine?” my dad says, “Holy hell!”

  “You need to leave,” my mom says, “Get out, Pete. Now!”

  “Is this why Julianne is always waiting on the porch when I pick her up? Christ on a shingle!”

  “She’s fine! Everything is fine! What are you doing here?”

  “What am I doing here? I had to hear from Tom Rourke that our daughter was taken out of class in a wheelchair! I’m her father and I don’t rate a phone call from you or the school? But the house, I mean look at it! How can you live like this? How can you let our daughter live like this?”

  “Julianne is fine!” my mom insists. “She’s resting in her—,”

  “Juliannnnne!” he yells.

  “I’m here! I’m coming!” I call out, making my way down the last few cluttered steps. As I round the corner of the main hall, within sight of my mom and dad now, I bump a tall stack of boxes with my hip which causes one of the higher boxes to tumble off. It hits my shoulder and makes a sad, bleating sound, like there’s a tiny lamb trapped inside. I move carefully and try to put it back but only succeed in causing a mini-avalanche of more boxes. As I step and clomp and scoot my way over and out of the mess, I hear my mom take in a sharp breath. Fire rips through me because I know that sharp breath is not meant for me. She’s afraid that I’m damaging the boxes; ruining her dolls.

  “Everything’s fine,” I mutter, “Nothing’s busted.”

  I work my way over. We physically cannot all fit into the kitchen so I kind of just stand in the hallway area just outside the doorway. My dad looks at me, then at my mom, then back at me. His face is dumbstruck.

  My mom stands amidst the heaps, posturing with her hands on her hips, and breathing like a horse. An hour ago she looked pale but her cheeks are bright and burning now. Her dark hair has come loose and is falling in stringy snarls around her face. I can’t help but feel sorry for her. She looks like some kind of madwoman.

  “It’s not that bad. Really,” I say to my dad. “My room is fine.”

  I want to invite him to my room so I can show him how neat and organized it is, but that would mean granting him a tour through the rest of the house. From his expression, he’s seen all he can handle for right now. The three of us stand in silence, glancing back and forth at each other, trying to process the inescapability of this dreadful moment.

  My mom finally cracks. She lets out a muffled sob then pushes past him, heads out the back door and into the yard.

  My dad’s hollow eyes dart around as he says, “Julianne, honey, the smell in here is unbearable. Dear god, where on earth do you eat?”

  He looks genuinely frantic, like he’s trapped inside the Death Star trash compactor and has thirty seconds to live. I look around and see what it is that my dad sees. And, wow, it’s bad. I forget how bad it is sometimes. I mean, I know how bad it is, I know. But when you live with it day in and day out, this crazy new version of “normal” settles over you and you just train yourself to block it out. You train yourself not to see or smell it. But seeing the house through someone else’s eyes, someone new to the situation, it’s like having blinders ripped off before being pushed over a waterfall. There’s no way around it. It’s really, really bad.

  The stove, which doesn’t work, has boxes and bags all over it. The sink is filled with dishes and pans that we never use. The counters, floor, and table…we haven’t seen those surfaces in years. The only thing that works in this kitchen is the fridge. And regarding the smell? Well…while I try to keep up with the garbage and food that comes in and out of here, and do a pretty good job for the most part, there’s no denying that a particular foulness clings to the place. There’s only so much you can do.

  Despite all of this, I feel the need to defend my mom and our house from my dad.


  “I have a mini-fridge and microwave in my room,” I say, as if this pathetic declaration is somehow supposed to make my dad feel better. All it does is make him chortle with revulsion. His reaction to all of this makes me angry because, as far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t get a freaking vote on how we live. He moved three hours away from me five years ago to marry What’s-Her-Face. Child support and a monthly trip to P.F. Chang’s does not a full-time parent make.

  “God, Julianne, you’re mom, she’s sick. This is sick,” he says, waving his hand, gesturing at the mess. “She was always a pack rat but this is insanity. What if there’s a fire? You’re on the second floor. You’ll never make it out. And you have a medical condition. How on earth does she cook for you? You’re diabetic, you need—,”

  “I’m not diabetic,” I say, scowling, “I have diabetes.”

  “Yes,” he says, shaking his head, catching himself. “You have diabetes, I’m sorry. But that doesn’t change the fact that you need a special diet; not meals that have been microwaved in your bedroom! How are your numbers overall? You’re counting your carbs and dosing properly before meals? Pinpricking regularly? Is your mom helping you keep track of things?”

  “Oh my god, really?” I say, because it’s insulting that he would ask me this.

  I have one incident in, like, forever and suddenly I'm incapable of navigating the minutiae of my condition? A good part of my day—every day, all day, forever and ever—revolves around caring for myself medically. I’ve been doing it for years and I’m not about to make a public announcement with every carb that goes into my mouth and every pinprick and shot that I have to give myself. It's no picnic having diabetes but there’s nothing I can do about it…it just is. What I can do though, is make it the most uninteresting part of who I am.

  “Today was an outlier and you know it, dad,” I say. “Regarding my diet, we eat out a lot. Not fast food. And she cooks a lot, too. The kitchen isn’t usually this bad. She’s just been busy with work.”

  Now I’m just making stuff up. My mom never cooks and she lost her job eight months ago. She was a receptionist for a chiropractor but—like all of her past jobs—was fired for too many absences. My dad storms outside to continue arguing with her so I follow him. My mom is sitting on the patio picnic bench, hunched over with her face in her hands.

  My dad looks down at her and sighs. After a few moments he says, “Get it together, Christine. I don’t know how it got this way but Julianne is not staying here until this place is cleaned up. She’s coming home with me for the summer. And if you don’t have it cleaned up before school starts again, I’m calling Child Protective Services, the Health Department, and my lawyer. She won’t be coming back here at all.”

  “Wait, what?” I say, because I do not quite believe what I’m hearing. Is he kidding?

  “Really dad?” I say. “Maybe you might call in the S.W.A.T. team while you’re at it? And I’m not coming to your house for the whole summer. I’ll come for some long weekends like I usually do but I’m not moving in. I have friends and a life here. I have plans.”

  And I do. My friends and I have made all kinds of summer plans. Sleepovers, keg parties, hanging out at Huntington Beach every day. I was even getting a job as a roller skating carhop at the drive-in. Taylor Anderson’s new stepdad owns it and I’ve been letting her cheat off of me in Chemistry all semester so I could land that job. I’m supposed to start work next weekend. Free movies and rolling around in cute retro mini-skirt every night? I’m not giving that up.

  “You’re not staying here,” my dad says.

  “Well, maybe the Rourke’s will let me stay with them this summer!” I argue, getting a bit louder.

  “You’re not staying with the Rourke’s either,” he says. “I mean, you can stay to finish out school this week, but then you’re driving to Middle Bass first thing Saturday morning. Pack a bag. I’ll wait in the car and you can follow me over.”

  As he’s walking away, I look down at my mom who is all shrunken up and sobbing like a child.

  “You can’t let this happen,” I say, “We have to do something quick.”

  She looks up at me with red, desperate eyes.

  “I’ll clean it up. I will,” she says, sniffing, wiping her nose with her sleeve. “It will take a few days but I’ll figure it out. I’ll hire someone tonight. Whatever it takes.”

  “Okay, you better,” I say. “Because I will not spend my whole summer, and then my senior year, living on that deserted island.”

  3.

  My mom found this woman on the internet last night and hired her over the phone. She’s a therapist of some kind and is supposed to help us get the house back into a livable state. From the sound of it, it’s going to be like one of those intervention-style TV shows about hoarders only without the cameras and nationwide audience of grossed-out viewers.

  I slept at the Rourke’s in Lindsey’s room and my dad slept in their rec room. We’ve just eaten a big family-style breakfast and it was completely awkward and overly-polite because everybody in the Rourke household, meaning Lindsey, her mom, dad, and nine-year-old twin brothers all know what’s going on. It was kind of difficult to hide our family drama from them.

  They scattered like mice last night while my dad and I had it out in their basement rec room. After about an hour of heated argument, my dad finally gave up and cracked open a beer. He just sat on the Rourke’s sectional couch coolly flipping through sports shows while I paced around in front of him in a full rampage. I mean, my life is falling apart and he’s sipping beer, watching golf, and completely dismissing my points?

  It’s not that bad! I yelled.

  Yes, it is. It’s a fire trap.

  I’ll buy a fire ladder! One of those rope ladders that you hang out a window!

  You’re not buying a fire ladder. You’re coming to Middle Bass until she cleans up.

  I am not living with you and that woman!

  That woman is my wife and your stepmother of five years. You’re coming.

  I’m nearly an adult! You can’t make me!

  You’re still in high school so yes, I can.

  I’ll run away!

  Save the melodrama, Julianne. It’s done. It’s happening. Deal with it.

  I cried myself to sleep and probably kept Lindsey up all night.

  Right now, my dad and I are standing in the Rourke’s driveway. Lindsey and I are headed to school so she’s waiting for me in my car.

  “I just hung up with mom,” I say. “This lady who specializes in hoarding is coming to the house tonight for a consultation. And then we’re going to spend all day tomorrow cleaning the place up. So you don’t have to worry, okay? It’s getting done.”

  My dad sighs, rubs his jaw. “I saw the place, Julianne. It is not a day’s worth of cleaning. It’s a month at least.”

  “But dad,” I say, “If mom and I work hard, we can—,”

  “Go to school, Julianne,” he says, interrupting me. “Finish your final exams. I’ll see you later today.”

  He waves me off, walks away and climbs into a truck sitting on the Rourke’s curb. It’s a white utility vehicle that says Edgewater Marina on the side of it. He came to Lakewood by speedboat yesterday instead of using the ferry. He was worried and it was a quicker, more direct route. He’s friends with everyone in the boating community so docked at Edgewater last night then borrowed one of their trucks. He has a fishing charter booked for late morning so is heading back to the islands.

  That’s what he does in the summer; he fishes for a living, or, rather, he takes other people fishing. He and my step-mom own a fleet of fishing and speedboats. My dad is an “outfitter,” which is like a travel agent and tour guide for outdoorsmen. They also own a storefront at Put-In-Bay on South Bass Island. Pete’s Year Round Sports Outfitters! They sell fishing equipment, camping supplies, and firearms and also rent out wave-runners, jet skis, and bicycles to tourists. Then, October through March, when the tourism season shuts down, he leads tran
scontinental hunting trips. He puts together groups of manly-men, and sometimes an enthusiastic wife, and they stay in lodges or camps and then go hunting for things like moose, black bear, and the occasional mountain lion. My dad’s den is lined wall-to-wall with antlers, animal heads, and trophies. There’s an extra freezer in his house filled with the most obscure North American meats and waterfowl you can imagine.

  As he pulls away, I stomp off to my car.

  “No luck?” Lindsey says when I get in and slam the door.

  “None,” I say.

  After crying most of the night, you would think I would be tapped out but I’m not. A fresh batch of Ugly Tears presents itself and I indulge for a few moments. Lindsey hands me a tissue from her bag.

  “He’s being an unreasonable jerk!” I say, sobbing and wiping my eyes.

  Lindsey pauses then says with measured deliberation, “Maybe your dad has a point. I mean, if the house is as wrecked as he claims it is, maybe this move will force your mom to get her act together.”

  I stop crying to glare at her and blow my nose.

  She immediately starts backpedaling, “Or maybe he’s being unreasonable, like you said. I’m just trying to stay positive, here. Help you see the bright side. I mean your summer won’t be that bad. It’s an island, maybe there will be hot tourist boys.”

  “An island. Yeah, right!” I say, scoffing. “It’s Lake Erie, Linz, not the Caribbean. There will be no palm trees and fruity umbrella drinks where I’m going. Where I’m going, there will be bass fishing and skunky beer. Oh, and a Martha Stewart step-clone. Yay.”

  I start the car and turn on some music, giving Lindsey the hint that I don’t want to talk about it anymore. There’s no point in arguing with her because there’s nothing she can do about it anyway. And my family has already made a complete nuisance of themselves, invading the harmonious Rourke family bubble with our ridiculous problems.

  When we get to school, I flip the mirror down and look at myself. My eyes are swelled up like red angry golf balls.

  “You want some cover up? Powder?” Lindsey asks.