Dolls Behaving Badly

by Cinthia Ritchie

  “Laurel said you spent the day sleeping.”

  “So?”

  “I don’t want to overload you. It’s just that Joe gave me an ultimatum. Either I file for a divorce or we cool it down until I do file.”

  “That sounds fair. Harsh, but fair.”

  “I didn’t think you’d take his side.”

  I made another egg sandwich and waited for Sandee to cool down. “You need to do something.” I placed half of the sandwich in front of her. “Call Randall or send him an e-mail. Just do something.” I pulled my cell phone out from beneath a pile of painting supplies. “Call him. Or call Toodles and have her call him. Just call somebody.” I pulled on my coat and motioned for Killer. “I’m walking the dog. You know how to work my cell, right?”

  The cold hit me like a slap, and Killer whimpered as we walked across the road and down by the inlet. My teeth chattered, and I could feel the wind through my pant legs, but still there was something exhilarating about being outside in such cold. The darkness was deep purple, and the snow-covered mountains gleamed against the horizon. After I scooped Killer’s poop up with an old plastic bag, we headed up the big hill toward home.

  “It’s done,” Sandee said the minute I walked in the door. She had put on lipstick and combed her hair. “Randall wants a divorce, I want a divorce, I guess I’m getting a divorce.” She laughed shakily. “I called Joe and he invited himself over to watch American Idol. I hope it’s okay.”

  I nodded and pulled off my boots.

  “It’s not what you expect, is it?” she continued. “Love, I mean. It’s nothing like movies or books. It’s more like a Wednesday, a middle-of-the-week day, slow and ordinary.”

  I thought of what the Oprah Giant had said, that desire is based on unattainability. We seek what we can’t have, and if we somehow manage to have it, we lose interest because we never really wanted it to begin with; what we wanted was the quest, the excitement of the chase, the validation of knowing someone wanted us so much they were willing to travel out of their comfort zone to try and catch us. It’s dysfunctional and doomed to fail, which makes it even that much more intoxicating. I wanted to tell this to Sandee, but I yawned instead. The short walk had exhausted me.

  “Go back to bed,” she said. “I’ll wake you when Joe gets here. And I’ll call Mr. Tims and arrange for time off, as many days as he can spare.”

  “I can’t afford it.”

  “You can’t afford not to. You need to take care of yourself. Jesus, Carla, everyone here depends on you. What would happen if you got seriously sick? That’s where you’re heading if you keep going at this pace.” She patted my butt. “Scoot. And not the sleeping bag on the floor either, but a real bed. Laurel can nap on the couch if she needs.”

  I trudged off to bed, crawled under the covers. It felt strange to sleep so high up, almost as if I were flying. I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew Jay-Jay was shaking my arms and telling me that Joe was there. I stumbled out into the living room.

  “Carly!” Laurel cried, as if she hadn’t seen me in years. I sat down and was immediately handed a paper plate filled with a strange lump that appeared to be covered in gravy.

  “That’s my chickpea cutlet,” Stephanie said proudly. “I’m totally thinking of going vegan.”

  “I’d be afraid to stop eating cheese and eggs,” Laurel said. “I don’t want my baby born without fingernails.”

  “This dude totally complained about a fingernail in one of Hammie’s pizza deliveries last week,” Stephanie said. “His girlfriend kept saying, ‘Honey, I think it’s mine,’ but he bitched until Hammie comped the order. He peed on the dude’s tires on the way out, to get even.”

  “Like that guy who lived with wolves,” Jay-Jay said excitedly. “He drank tons of beer and peed around this huge square to mark his territory.”

  “The wolves peed right over it again,” Joe said. He sat beside Sandee drinking generic root beer and sawing away at Stephanie’s cutlet, which had the consistency of cooked rubber. He looked perfectly at home.

  I fell asleep again as Sandee told a story about a customer at Mexico in an Igloo who tried to pay his bill with wolf pelts. When I woke hours later, the house was silent and Stephanie was curled up in my usual spot on the floor. I found Laurel in the kitchen eating raw chocolate chip cookie dough without the eggs.

  “It’s been bothering me,” she said the minute I walked in. “I kept brushing my teeth because I couldn’t figure it out. So I got out my camera and look, tell me what’s wrong, okay?”

  I lifted the camera and peered at the preview window and there we were, all of us—Stephanie, Sandee, Joe, Laurel, and Jay-Jay. We were all smiling (although I had drool on my face from napping), not the fake smiles people put on for the camera but real and imperfect smiles: our mouths opened too wide, our eyes crinkled, the sides of our faces wrinkled.

  “Something’s wrong. I can’t put my finger on it and, Carly, it’s driving me crazy.”

  I didn’t say anything for a long minute. “We look happy, that’s what’s wrong. We all look happy.”

  Chapter 26

  Wednesday, Feb. 22

  ONCE, GRAMMA SET UP a scavenger hunt for me. I was in high school and much too old for children’s games, but I went along with it anyway. The theme was food, and each clue spelled out the ingredients for a recipe I was instructed to cook. I can’t remember what this was, only that it didn’t turn out; maybe I burned it or added too much salt. Before long, Gramma grew impatient at my clumsiness and took over.

  “What, now you cannot read the letters?” she said, shaking the map over the counter and explaining each clue to me. I didn’t mind being scolded and I especially didn’t mind my grandmother taking over cooking duties. I sat at the table and told Gramma the story of Frida Kahlo, who Gramma loved because she had the strongest “flue-flue,” which meant that she had balls. Mostly, though, she adored Diego, who was fat and messy in most of his photographs.

  “That Frida a lucky woman,” she’d say. “She got the gift and the fat man.”

  Then she’d make placki kartoflane, potato pancakes. Talking about Diego got Gramma so riled up that she often kept right on cooking: pork chops, meatballs, golabki, cabbage and mushroom pierogi, and raisin and raspberry jam jelly rolls. Platters filled the counters, the tables, overflowed out into her messy living room.

  Remembering this made me hungry for potato pancakes, so I rooted around the refrigerator, lined up all the ingredients, and started grating potatoes and carrots. I was mixing in flour and eggs when Laurel shuffled into the kitchen in her oversized slippers. The chair pulled out and slammed back in again, and as she rearranged herself to get comfortable, I prayed she wouldn’t start in with her stupid questions. I had too much to worry about this morning: I still hadn’t fixed the shading in my last painting, and Jay-Jay’s spelling bee was Friday. I mixed harder, the spoon tap-tap-tapping the edge of the metal bowl.

  “Listen, Carly,” she began happily. “If you could be any type of punctuation mark, which would you be?” She paused and, when I didn’t answer, kept right on talking. “I’d be a semicolon. There’s something about that squiggly line with the little dot that commands respect. You pause but don’t quite stop, like a yield sign. I used to be a period—I had that authority, that stop-right-here presence—but I think it’s better this way, don’t you?”

  “I-I guess so.” I leaned down to retrieve the skillet from the bottom cupboard when something hit me in the ass. “Ouch!” I jumped back. Something else hit me in the back of the shoulders and then the back of my head. “Stop it!” I turned around, ready to smack Laurel with the dish towel, when I noticed small bundles of money scattered across the floor.

  “For the furnace.” Laurel stuck her fingers in the jelly jar and licked them clean. “So you don’t have to worry about more credit card debt. You might want to buy a better house someday, and Carly, your credit score follows you around. It’s like your blood type. It’s that important.
”

  There was over a thousand dollars spread out around me, mostly in twenties. “Where did this come from?”

  “I sold my clothes. Thank god I’m a popular size. If I were skinnier they wouldn’t have gone so fast.”

  “You sold your designer outfits?” Laurel’s clothes were her identity, and she kept them arranged in the closet through a complicated system of favorability. A purple blouse might hang next to a yellow blazer not because they coordinated but because she believed that if they came to life they would wear the same lipstick shade.

  “I didn’t need them any longer. I’m about to be a mother—what am I going to do with a white Anne Klein suit, or shoes with three-inch heels?”

  “You’re giving this to me? All of it?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve been living here for months, eating your food and using your washing machine—which, by the way, makes a funny noise during the spin cycle. You might want to get someone out to look at it.”

  Tears welled up in my eyes. “Well, Laurel, I mean you didn’t have to do this.”

  “I know.” She wiped her sleeve across her forehead. Now that the furnace was fixed she was warm all the time and gave off a yeasty, almondy smell. “I posted everything on Craigslist and said I was moving so people would act fast. The hardest part was taking pictures. I had to put a sheet over your bedspread. No offense, Carly, but that sure is an eyesore and would have brought the prices down. I sold my Coach purse in less than five minutes. After that it was like dominos falling over: blouses, suits, shoes, pants, one after another after another. I mailed or delivered them myself; I didn’t want anyone to know I was selling from a trailer. Like I said, stuff like that can really kill the price.”

  I grabbed her hand and squeezed. “Thanks.” My voice was thick with tears.

  “I thought I’d miss them but I don’t. Oh, I miss what they represent, me as a well-dressed, competent woman; I miss that more than I can say. But I bought them when I was someone else. They don’t belong to the person I’ve become. Don’t get me wrong, I have no intention of wearing discount maternity rags all my life. After the baby comes I’ll find another job and buy a new wardrobe, though probably not as expensive. Paying three hundred fifty dollars for a blouse no longer makes sense.”

  She got up and pulled a new jar of jelly out of the cupboard, sat back down, and licked the lid. “I know you’ve always seen me as strident and overly materialist and maybe I was, though a lot of it was put on for my job. Once you adopt a persona, it’s hard to shrug it off. But once it’s gone you can’t pull it back on again, not when you’ve moved so far from what you once were.” She paused for a moment and looked down at her hands. “I’m not getting back with Junior, am I?”

  I wanted to say, Sure you will in a hearty, fake voice, but I didn’t. “I don’t know,” I started, and then I was more honest. “Probably not.”

  Laurel had jelly smeared across her upper lip. “You’d think it would bother me more, but it doesn’t, or at least not yet.” She slurped jelly in silence. “Next week you take your paintings down for your show.”

  “Ummmmm.”

  “I’m glad, Carly. I really am. Maybe we’re both getting what we want, you with your show and me with my baby. I always expected my life would be a straight line but it’s turned all curvy, and the oddest thing is that it’s so much better this way, even living in this trailer and having almost no money. I wonder why that is?”

  “It’s happiness,” I said again, blushing slightly, as if I was talking about sex or feminine hygiene products.

  “Happiness?” Laurel leaned forward. There was jelly in the corner of her mouth. “Do you really think this is what happiness is?”

  “Maybe.” I ladled the potato pancakes over the griddle and watched them bubble up with the heat. I could feel Laurel waiting for a better answer but I couldn’t give it to her. I shrugged and said it again: “maybe.”

  Friday, Feb. 24

  “Don’t sit too close to the front because that’s dumb,” Jay-Jay told us when he came out to breakfast. It was the day of the Alaska State Spelling Bee, and he wore freshly ironed pants (thanks to Laurel) and a neat oxford shirt (ditto), and his hair was freshly slicked back. “And don’t yell or clap too hard when I get a word right.”

  We all nodded, though of course we were planning on sitting up front and we would all clap too hard.

  “Do you have your lucky charm?” Laurel was on her third piece of toast. “Tuck it in your right pocket, this way the luck will come to you. The left is for releasing luck out to the universe.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Jay-Jay mumbled. “I just hope I don’t miss an easy word.” He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Last year this kid went down on dolphin; you could tell he knew it, too, but there was a disconnect between his brain and mouth.”

  “Nervous?” Stephanie asked.

  He shrugged and went to put on his shoes. No one spoke much on the drive downtown, and after I left Jay-Jay and Laurel off at the curb, I pulled into the Fifth Avenue Mall parking garage. I wore dark glasses in case anyone recognized me from my art show poster, and Stephanie had on a vintage polka-dot dress that swirled out from her hips and army boots, with striped socks sticking out the top.

  “Hammie’s totally skipping economics to come.” She sidestepped a discarded Coke can. “He hates spelling; you should see his e-mails. I wrote a poem about it but I think I totally hurt his feelings. Now he mostly texts. Men are so sensitive, Mrs. Richards. Their egos are, like, totally fragile.”

  Laurel saved seats for us down front, seven in a row—Barry was coming as soon as he filed next week’s produce order, and Francisco promised to be there after his work meeting. Parents and family sat in the outside aisles and spelling bee contestants in the middle. I spotted Jay-Jay in the seventh row, sitting between a freckled girl and a chubby boy.

  “Jay-Jay,” I yelled, frantically waving my arms. “We’re over here, honey.”

  He glared and pretended I didn’t exist. The parents looked far more nervous than the kids. My hands were sweating, and I worried I hadn’t worn enough deodorant. I asked Laurel if I smelled, but she had her shoes kicked off and wasn’t listening.

  “Even my feet are fat,” she complained. “Even my toes—look!” She pulled off her socks and wiggled her chubby toes at me. “It’s so hard being pregnant, I had no idea. The birthing instructor says that once we go through childbirth we’ll forget everything bad about being pregnant. Do you think that’s true?”

  I thought of my own labor, which had lasted thirty-six hours. I still remember the pain, so hot and immense I was sure I was going to die, yet behind it something so strong and binding that the moment Jay-Jay lay on my stomach, his face all scrunched and mashed from the birthing canal, his hands curled into angry fists, I recognized him immediately, recognized his face, as if I had known him a long time ago. “Yes, I think it’s true,” I said, squeezing Laurel’s arm. She smiled over at me, just as the spelling announcer walked up onstage. He had on two-toned loafers and was introducing the three judges in a laconic tone when Sandee slid into the seat next to Laurel.

  “Mr. Tims sends his luck, along with everyone else from work,” she whispered loudly.

  After we heard the rules (no walking up and down the aisles or entering/exiting while a speller was spelling), the first speller bravely approached the stage and spelled her word correctly. So did the next, and the next. Francisco arrived after the first miss, and I clutched his hand, my mind slowly wandering. I didn’t notice Barry come in, or Hammie. I swirled colors around and was busy re-creating Monet’s Water Lilies (I was having problems with the petals, which looked like vaginas unfolding across the water) when Laurel elbowed me in the side.

  “Wake up,” she whispered. “It’s almost time.”

  I blinked. Jay-Jay’s row was filing down to the front of the auditorium, fifteen elementary and middle school students in their too-big spelling bee T-shirts. Jay-Jay was the smallest; he barely came to the shoulder of
the kid behind him. He looked so defenseless! So vulnerable! Those big kids were going to eat him alive.

  “Help,” I gulped to Laurel, my fingers tightening around her wrist. “I can’t bear it.”

  “He’ll be fine,” she said with such confidence that I immediately sat up straighter. “He’s strong—he won’t buckle under pressure.”

  We sat silently, barely breathing as Jay-Jay made his way across the stage and stood in front of the microphone. His left shoelace was untied, and his spelling bee T-shirt bagged around his knees.

  “Pugnacious,” the announcer said, and Jay-Jay drew himself up, leaned closer to the microphone, and spelled it perfectly.

  “Fuck,” Barry whispered loudly; heads turned. “Don’t think I’ll make it through another round.”

  It was heartbreaking watching kids go down and how they struggled, their faces scrunched, their hands pulling at their T-shirts. By the time the first round was over, we were all exhausted. We waited in line for the restroom, then sat in the lobby eating the butterscotch cookies Barry had made. Jay-Jay sat with us and chattered; he didn’t seem the least bit concerned about the pressure.

  “Were you scared?” Sandee asked. “It looked so lonely up there.”

  “You don’t notice.” Cookie crumbs flew from his mouth. “You zone out until nothing exists but you and the word. It becomes, like, this entity, and you’ve gotta fight to find the letters.”

  “It’s totally Zen,” Stephanie said. “It’s like the ultimate battle of the subconscious with the leftover regime of the status quo.”

  We all nodded as if we knew what she was talking about; it seemed the polite thing to do. More kids went down in the second round, as the words became progressively tougher: Klompen. Mutafacient. Parchment.

  By the time Jay-Jay reached the stage more than half of the participants had been eliminated. He squinted in the overhead lights.

  “Perpendicularly,” the announcer said.

  “Should have brought my Dramamine,” Barry moaned, his arms folded around his belly. The rest of us leaned forward as if to urge Jay-Jay on. He drew in a breath, closed his eyes, and stepped up to the microphone.