I closed my eyes and thought of soothing colors: titan buff, cobalt teal, Quinicidrone red. I planned to spend the entire day painting and warned everyone that as soon as I put on my headphones I would be gone; I wouldn’t really be there.
“Okay if I go over to Alan’s? We’re filming his rock collection.”
“Call the minute you get over there, not like last time…”
The door slammed and soon after, the phone rang.
“I didn’t die,” he said sarcastically. “I’m staying for lunch, and Mom, Alan’s mom saw a poster of you in City Market and said it looked like your nostrils were flaring in triumph.”
“I’m fucked,” I said as soon as I hung up. “The fliers are up. Soon everyone will know I make dirty dolls.” I leaned against the kitchen counter. “I hope no one scrawls nasty messages over our front door.”
“Chill,” Stephanie said. “You’re totally overreacting. It’s just sex. No one cares.”
“Just sex,” I snorted. “The Bible thumpers will want my head.” I walked over to where Stephanie was sitting. “Do my nostrils flare? Tell me the truth, okay?”
She studied me a moment. “Well, they, like, balloon out when you’re excited, but don’t worry, Mrs. R, I read on the Internet that it’s a sign of sexual generosity.”
“Who’s generous?” Laurel walked into the kitchen dressed in a hideous red-and-blue blouse and yellow sweatpants. From the side, with her stomach blooming out, she resembled Gramma.
“My fliers are up. Alan’s mother saw them at—”
Laurel held up her hand like a traffic cop. “Spare me the details. I need to surround myself in serenity before class. Steph, you ready?”
“Totally.”
Laurel was prepping Stephanie as a birthing coach alternate, in case I was stuck at work when her labor hit. She gathered up crackers, juice, cough drops, and the picture of Jay-Jay she was using as her focal point, the one taken on a clamming trip down at Nikiski. Jay-Jay stood in the sand in his oversized rubber boots, muddy and grinning and holding up a clamshell almost as large as his head. As soon as Stephanie and Laurel left, I pulled on my coat, tied a scarf around my neck, called for Killer, and headed down toward City Market. I needed to see the flier for myself. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought, I said to Killer as we walked. Probably it was half-hidden by notices for babysitters and dog walkers.
It wasn’t. The flier was large, like a theater poster, and displayed smack in the middle of the entranceway; it was impossible to miss. My photograph smiled in a dopey manner, while my dirty dolls danced around the corners. It was garish, loud, obscene. I froze. I couldn’t move.
“Miss, your dog can’t come in here,” a young boy working by the vegetables said, and heads turned. Did they notice the resemblance between my face and the one on the flier? I began to sweat, and before I knew it, I was tearing the flier off the wall. I had one side pulled down when a hand grabbed my wrist.
“You don’t want to do that,” a voice said. I looked over expecting to see the vegetable stocker but it was an elderly man in a bright red cardigan sweater.
“I-I don’t?”
“No, dear.” He released my arm and squinted at the poster. “It needs to be up. It’s art.” I gave him a grateful smile because he was right. It was art, and there was nothing to be ashamed of. “You should have made the naked women bigger,” he said, pointing toward the dirty dolls. “I can’t see their tits.”
I walked back home with Killer, only to discover the furnace had died. The house was already getting cold, so I fired up the oven, threw a blanket over my shoulders, and called several repair shops. Furnaces were down all over town, they all told me, and no one was available until next week.
When I mentioned that my pregnant sister lived with me, one man promised to fit us in. “The missus was always cold when it come her time,” he said. “Slippers, bathrobes, sweaters. Now she’s going through the change and sleeps with nothing but a sheet.”
The repairman (“Call me Ed!”) arrived later that afternoon. He was in a glum mood but cheered up when he saw the furnace.
“She’s an old one,” he said as he knelt in the hallway and opened the door that housed the furnace’s innards. “I’ll do my best but she ain’t got but a breath or two left.”
Ed didn’t look as if he had many breaths left, either. His pants sagged around his hips and his beard looked dull and tired. After two hours of clanking and tinkering, he declared the furnace officially dead and handed me a bill for $273.92. “’Course that’s without the new furnie installation.” He wiped his face with a dirty rag that magically appeared from his pocket. “Not sure how the pipes look, might have to replace ’em as well.”
A new “furnie” would cost around $750, with an extra $300 or so for installation, unless we bought it from his shop; then they’d halve the setup charges plus kick in an additional 10 percent discount, along with a free calendar and coffee mug. I made plans for everything to be delivered Monday and walked him out.
“Ain’t it a bitch?” he said as I opened the door and the cold snapped us in the face. He stared at me a moment too long. “You look familiar but don’t think I ever been to this address before.” He scratched his neck. “Maybe I seen you around town.” He shook my hand with his greasy paw and drove off in his dilapidated truck. I settled down at the kitchen table and tried to figure out how to come up with over a thousand dollars by Monday. I was still there when Laurel got up.
“What was all that noise? I woke up twice and could barely get back to sleep.”
I told her about needing a new furnace and how much it was going to cost.
“We alone?” she interrupted
“Jay-Jay is at Alan’s, and Steph is out sledding.”
She pulled the blanket tighter around her. “I don’t want to be pregnant anymore. I’m tired of doing all the work. It took two of us to get this way, so why isn’t Hank lugging thirty extra pounds and craving Dinty Moore beef stew?”
“Safeway beef stew,” I corrected.
“Huh?”
“Safeway brand; you won’t eat Dinty Moore,” I said, but Laurel only sighed and played with her bathrobe sash. “Hit him where it hurts.” I rummaged around the cupboard for the small saucepan. “Sue his ass for child support—weren’t you talking about that earlier? Take him for everything you can get.” I opened the freezer, retrieved my frozen credit card, and plopped it into the pan. I planned to bring it to a slow boil in hopes of unthawing it without ruining the bar code.
“I will, believe me. It was his penis that got me into this mess. Promise you won’t say anything, but it was larger than most—not that I cared, but he expected me to swoon, which doesn’t make sense when you think about it. Penis size isn’t a character attribute or something he worked to achieve. It’s genetics, pure and simple, and aside from sex, a big penis isn’t really that useful—it can’t stop global warming or feed the hungry.”
I scooped my credit card out with a pair of tongs and laid it gently over a paper towel. It looked okay to me, maybe a bit shinier than normal but seemingly undamaged. I flipped it over. My signature was blurred but still recognizable.
“It’s not that I didn’t appreciate it,” Laurel kept on. “I just wasn’t willing to worship it, which I’m thankful for now. Look at me, Carly! Look at the things my body can do!” She gave her massive belly a loving little thump. “I’m growing a baby, a whole separate life, isn’t that the most amazing thing?” She reached for a package of crackers and crammed two in her mouth. “Why are you cooking your credit card?”
I sighed and told her again about how much the furnace was going to cost and how I had to thaw my credit card out in order to charge the repairs.
“There’s no other way.” I held the card in my palm. It felt slippery and warm, like holding someone’s hand. “It’s just that…remember how I told you I had had a little bit of trouble with my finances, right? Well, the credit counselor has really straightened me out. I’m down to ju
st a few thousand on four cards, my interest rates are manageable, and by next year I should be totally debt free.” I almost mentioned the Oprah Giant’s diary program but slammed my mouth shut at the last moment.
Laurel smeared jelly over the crackers and licked her fingers. “Do we have any Chunky Monkey left? And maybe a little bit of chocolate sauce to go over it, and whipped cream and oh, Carly, if I could have a cherry on top it would be perfect. I have a busy afternoon ahead of me.”
I got out the ice cream, fixed Laurel a sundae, and decided to make one for myself, too. I sat down beside her and dug in. “Remember the time…,” I began, but she was already waddling her sundae back to the bedroom. “Knock if you need to come in,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ll be working through most of the afternoon and will probably take off after supper to do the rest in person. You seeing Francisco tonight?”
“He’s giving a talk up in Healy.”
She didn’t answer, so I put the ice cream away and decided to make bread. Gramma used to say that baking bread was like giving birth, that it took a long time, was often painful, and you never knew what you’d end up with but knew you’d love it nevertheless. She baked bread every Wednesday, the middle of the week, six dark and dense loaves filled with herbs and nuts. My favorite was caraway seed and rosemary bread, which Gramma made with just enough buttermilk to give it a tang, but I was sticking to a basic white and whole wheat flour mix. My loaves were usually misshapen and soggy in the middle, but we ate them anyway, tearing off pieces and smearing them with margarine while they were still hot.
After the yeast bubbled (“It trying to talk,” Gramma used to say. “Imagine the stories it know”), I added shortening, salt, sugar, and milk, then measured out the flour—the final and most important step, according to Gramma, who varied the amount according to the weather, precipitation, and time of day. Afternoon bread demanded more flour, so I added an extra handful. Then I began to knead. It was my favorite part, the whole reason I baked bread: the feel of the dough, sticky yet determined, and how it clung to my hands one minute, retreated the next. It was a dance: punch, fold, press, pat. Gramma never followed a recipe when she baked bread but it always came out perfect, at least to us, though she always found a flaw. I don’t think she was ever completely happy with a loaf. I lightly patted my ball of dough with oil. Some people oiled the pans instead, but Gramma claimed that disrupted the natural istota, or the heart and soul, of the bread. I covered the dough with a dish towel, placed it on top of the warm oven, and checked the clock. As I waited for it to rise, I looked over my Woman Running with a Box, No. 13 painting. It was one of the last in a series of fifteen, and the woman was racing in the Iditarod Sled Dog Race, her hair flowing behind her as she mushed across the Bering Sea. Scattered across the sled were a slew of dirty dolls: Suck Me Sammie hung from the front rails; Pearl Necklace Polly and Darcie Do-Me-from-Behind sat on the supply pack, arms raised like beauty queens waving from a float. On the floor Fisting Fred bent over, his overly large ass exposed for all the world to see, each gigantic cheek covered in newsprint: “due to the economic decline,” it said on the left side, and “according to witness testimony” on the other.
“I’m fucked,” I said to Killer. The Iditarod is regarded as sacred, the last great race in a state slowly modeling itself after every other state in America. Insulting the Iditarod is like insulting Jesus. As luck would have it, the ceremonial start took place in Anchorage the same weekend my show opened.
“I’m really, really fucked,” I repeated to Killer. But the dough magically rose, and I stuck two misshapen loaves in the oven, the warm and yeasty smells filling the air so that all night I felt loved and protected.
What was on my answering machine
6:55 a.m. Mrs. Richards? It’s Ed. I was over the other day about the furnace call and realized you’re the gal from the art poster they was talking about after church. Never thought I’d meet a real-life celebrity. The missus wants to know if you’ll autograph the repair bill, it would give her—Click.
12:56 p.m. Carla! This is Jenny Jeffers, remember? We worked together at the Captain Cook a couple of years ago. I just saw the advert for your art show. Wow. Sounds like you’ve been getting laid a lot. Let’s get together and—Click.
4:23 p.m. Hey, Really Real Girl, if I pay you fifty bucks, will you spank me with a Ping-Pong paddle?
Monday, Feb. 20
“If there was music playing in the background of your life, like a Hollywood movie, what song would it be?” Laurel sat on the floor beside where I had been sleeping, her hands folded across her belly. “And choose carefully—that one song would have to stay with you your whole life.”
“What time is it?” I pulled myself up. Stephanie was gone from the couch and I could hear murmurs from out in the kitchen. “Did I oversleep?”
“I think I’d pick something by Joni Mitchell,” Laurel continued. “Or Carole King. It would have to be a woman—imagine having to listen to a man over and over again.”
Out in the kitchen Jay-Jay and Stephanie ate pancakes. “But here’s the thing”—Jay-Jay was talking about his fruit-fly project—“if I increase their food they eat more but less often, isn’t that cool? If people could do that we wouldn’t have to worry about getting fat.”
“You should totally see the toilets in the gym,” Stephanie said. “They’re plugged from girls puking.” She took a big bite of toast. “Most think I’m ano since I’m so skinny but it’s just, like, my metabolism. My mom was totally thin before she started drugs. Now she fluctuates: fat, emaciated, fat, emaciated.”
“What’s ano?” Jay-Jay asked.
“Anorexic,” Laurel answered. She sat down and immediately began stuffing pancakes in her mouth. “I’ll take leftovers if anyone’s got them.”
I huddled in the last chair. In less than two weeks my opening would be over and I could live my life as a normal person again, without the threat of shame and ruin hanging over my head each time I listened to my answering machine messages. To calm my nerves I decided to pay my bills ahead of time. The Oprah Giant says that procrastinating is a sign of fear. “How can you like yourself when you’re afraid to face yourself?” she asked. The credit counselor was a bit more realistic. To her it was all about math: you have so much coming in and so much going out, and in between is what you live on. I got out my checkbook, credit card statements, and Jay-Jay’s old calculator, and I jotted down numbers and signed checks as everyone talked around me. Laurel was still deciding on a baby name, Jay-Jay wondered if fruit flies ever committed suicide, and Stephanie worried about getting into Stanford.
“They send out the letters April first. Is that totally cruel or what?”
“Why would that be cruel?” Laurel asked.
“Hello! It’s April Fools’ Day.”
I licked stamps and set the envelopes in the middle of the table; I would drop them off at the post office on the way to work. It felt good to get them out of the way. Now I could concentrate on my paintings. I was finished, except for touch-ups, sequencing, and titles. I had no idea if they were good or bad. Looking at them was like looking at Jay-Jay’s or Laurel’s face: familiar and dear, all faults visible yet muted by love. I was ready to ask if anyone needed anything at the store when I started to cry. I set my head down on the dirty tablecloth and sobbed so hard the salt and pepper shakers jostled up and down.
“Mrs. Richards?” Stephanie said, but Laurel shushed her.
“Let her be,” she said. “She needs to get it out.”
Chairs scraped against the floor as everyone got up. Water splashed; someone washed the dishes. Someone else took out Killer. And still I cried. I couldn’t seem to stop. I momentarily worried about becoming dehydrated but then remembered I was close to the kitchen faucet. Hours later I woke to the smell of grilled cheese sandwiches and lifted my head. Jay-Jay and Alan sat across from me eating an after-school snack while Stephanie told them a story of Hammie’s pizza deliveries.
“And so then he
totally tells the dude that they don’t deliver to the Upper Hillside but the guy, like, insists that he ordered a pizza just last week and they totally delivered it. So finally Hammie drives all the way up these slippery roads out by like Prospect Heights and knocks on his door and guess who answers?”
“Wayne Newton,” Jay-Jay and Alan shouted; they had heard him sing on a PBS special last night, and he was their new joke.
I fell back to sleep. Cupboards opened and closed, doors slammed, Stephanie’s cell phone rang again and again. Alan’s mother stopped by to walk him home, Killer threw up on the rug, and Laurel went over more baby names with Stephanie. When I woke for good it was dark, and Laurel sat across from me tapping away on her laptop.
“A Jimmie called about your dirty dolls and offered his good luck with your show.”
“Jimmie?”
“He and his boy toy got kicked out of the nudist resort for wearing clothes.” She snorted. “If my Realtor friends could see me now: living in a trailer, pregnant with a married man’s child, and conversing with a gay man with a ten-inch dick.”
“How do you know how big his dick is?” My neck hurt and I felt ornery.
“Jimmie ‘Ten-inch’ Dean? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out.”
I was eating my second egg sandwich when Sandee walked in the door. Her hair frizzed around her head, and she smelled of fajita grease. “Where were you?” She sat down in the chair next to me. “It was brutal. I was stiffed twice. Mr. Tims was furious you didn’t show but I told him you were a waitress on the verge of a nervous breakdown and if he wasn’t nice he could end up in your next show. That shut him up fast.” She took a bite of my sandwich, and then another. “Nutmeg?” I shook my head yes, and she stared at me hard. “You okay? Your face looks blotchy and crinkled.”
“I fell asleep on the kitchen table.” I noticed that Sandee’s fingernails were bitten and ragged. “You don’t look so good yourself. What’s up?”
Dolls Behaving Badly Page 27