I knew I should feel jealous. Here was a woman who was obviously going to be important in Barry’s life, his first major relationship since our divorce. Yet I wasn’t, or at least not yet. I squeezed Toodles’s hand and smiled back. “I’d love to stay for dinner,” I said, even though I had just eaten.
While they scurried around getting things ready, I sat at the table and told them about my show and the interview with Betty Blakeslee.
“She treats Native artists like crap,” Toodles said. “My friend Susie Coyote had a show, and she made a huge stink that Susie was Navajo, not Alaska Native. As if it matters. Native is Native; we’re all treated like shit. Susie mentioned that, and know what Blakeslee said? She said that Susie used too much orange in her work and could she tone it down, please? She’s one cold woman.”
I bit down on the appetizers Toodles set down in front of me, cucumber slices with a mini shrimp on top, covered in an orange sauce and topped with a curly slice of onion. The flavors tingled my mouth. “Wow, this is good.” I ate two more before I decided to tell them the rest. “There’s something else,” I said. “Can I borrow your laptop?”
“Over by the couch.” Barry motioned with his head.
I carried it out to the table and punched up the gallery site and then the administrative code Tim Tuppelo had given me. “This is the bad part. In fact, it might ruin me, or at least ruin whatever feeble standing I’ve managed to make in the community, which isn’t much, mind you, but at least…”
“Can’t be that bad,” Barry said. “You ain’t got a mean bone in your body.”
“You’d better look at this first.” I pointed to the laptop screen. “It’s, well, it’s just…” I laughed weakly and shoved another appetizer into my mouth.
Barry and Toodles walked over and stood behind me. I hesitated before opening the laptop lid. “Don’t be mad,” I said to Barry.
“Why would I be mad?” He leaned forward, his head right over my shoulder.
“No, it’s… Okay, see for yourselves.” I flipped opened the lid and waited.
Barry whistled. “Holy fuck. I know them dolls!”
“You— You do?”
“Gus got one from his wife, said it was a joke but he still talks about it.” He squinted as if he had never seen me before. “How long you been doing this?”
I shrugged. “A couple of years, though they just took off last year.”
“Thinking Butts and Boobs is the real deal,” Toodles said. “It’s like the New York Times of erotica. It’s nothing to sniff at.”
“But it’s erotica,” I said.
“So?” She walked back to the oven to check the meatballs. “It’s not like you’re starring in triple-X movies.” She opened the oven door and poked the meat with a fork. “A couple more minutes,” she said to Barry, and then she turned back to me. “Besides, whose business is it anyway?”
“Well, people will definitely talk. And there’s Jay-Jay to think about.”
“Jay-Jay’s fine,” Barry said.
“Fuck them.” Toodles pulled vegetables from the refrigerator and started mixing a salad. “Not Jay-Jay, I mean the other assholes. Bear, hand me the sharper knife.” Barry slid the knife across the counter as she continued talking, her words interspersed with the chopping of carrots and onion. “People can be cruel, believe me. Back in the village it was the white kids who had it tough, especially the half-breeds, which included me. We were worse than the whites because we didn’t belong to either side. When I came here I thought I’d finally belong, but that didn’t happen, either.” She stopped to wipe her hands on her shirt. “So people talk.” Toodles popped an appetizer into her mouth. “Big deal. Hold your head high and ignore them because, honey, you’re about to have a show.”
“Thanks,” I said, surprised; I hadn’t expected the woman sleeping with my ex-husband to be the one to come to my rescue. “I still think they should take the website off the flier, though.”
“No way.” Toodles shook her head. “Trust a private detective on this one. That mention is going to make you a shitload of money. It could be the thing that launches you.”
“It’s ready,” Barry said, pulling the pan out of the oven. I sat down at the table with my ex-husband and his new lover and ate the moose meatballs Toodles made, the small red potatoes Barry made, and the cranberry-apple pie they baked together.
“I picked these cranberries up by Denali last year.” Toodles helped herself to a second piece. “Ahhhhh,” she said, and then she crinkled her nose and opened her eyes. “Something is missing. See if you can catch it, Bear.” She forked a piece into his mouth and they closed their eyes, identical expressions on their faces.
Sitting there across from them, I thought of what the Oprah Giant had said about following one’s true path and no matter how far you stray, sooner or later you’ll be redirected toward your destiny. I wondered if the reason Barry and I had met was to have Jay-Jay, and if the reason we broke up was to direct Barry toward Toodles. Maybe that was even why Randall left, because if he hadn’t, Sandee wouldn’t have hired Toodles, who wouldn’t have thought about Barry again. It sounded preposterous, but sitting there, I believed it with all of my heart, all of my being. I opened my mouth, took another bite of pie, closed my eyes, and savored.
Saturday, Feb. 11
I was happily smearing purple inside a dark shadow on my Woman Running with a Box, No. 11 painting when something rustled against the sliding glass door that leads out to the porch. “Bullwinkle,” I said, and Killer thumped her tail because we both knew that moose liked to cozy up to the trailer when the temperatures dipped. Last week a large male had slept on the porch, its bony head so close to the sliding door that its breath left moist spots over the glass. I hurried over to the door to take a peek, and two eyes peeked back at me. I yelped, and Killer Bee whimpered against my legs.
“It’s me, damn it,” a muffled voice yelled.
“Sandee?” I lifted the blinds again and there she was, her face mashed against the window, her nose flat and wrinkled pale.
“Open up, it’s freezing out here,” she yelled.
“Can’t you go around to the front door?”
“No, I cannot use the front door. The squeak of the hinges might do me in.”
I slid open the latch, which was lined with ice, and watched Sandee struggle through the snow that had drifted up against the door. Her hair was wet, her sweatshirt covered with food stains.
“Where’s your coat?” I asked.
“My life is falling apart and you’re worried about a coat?”
She pulled up a kitchen chair and started talking before she even sat down. “I got it. Not that I asked but Toodles came in to work tonight. I told you she was pushy.” She lifted her head. “Did you make brownies? I swear I smell burnt chocolate.”
I shook my head no. I had spent the night obsessing over why I wasn’t painting as much as I should, and Stephanie had spent the night obsessing over the college applications she sent in months ago. Sandee sighed and continued: “I was in the middle of an eight-top of servers from the Sheraton, you know how well they tip, and suddenly Toodles scurries over to my table and waves a manila envelope in my face and I swear, all I could think of was that Let’s Make a Deal show I watched as a kid. Remember how Monty Hall waved those envelopes in contestants’ faces?
“So she places the envelope on my tray—she was very polite, I have to give her that—and she says, ‘I was waiting for the right time, and then last night I dreamed of your body with a wolf head.’ A wolf head, Carla, like it was predestined by something bigger than us.”
She reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a folded tan envelope, salsa smeared across the top. “I can’t open it. I tried, but my fingers won’t work. Could you?” Her voice trembled and she swallowed a loud gulp. “But don’t tell me, okay? I don’t want to know where he lives or what he looks like or if he’s with someone else. I just want to know that he agrees to the divorce.”
I pick
ed up the envelope. “You sure you want me to?” It was like opening my Woman Running box and how once those dirty dolls scampered out, I couldn’t ignore them, couldn’t pretend that they didn’t mean as much as they did. “We could wait until later, give you time to consider your options—”
“Do it.” Sandee’s face was scrunched so tight I was afraid her forehead might crack. I slid the edge of my paintbrush beneath the envelope flap and tore it open. A picture of Randall fell out and I clapped my hand over it, but not fast enough. Sandee tugged it away. “He’s fat,” she gasped. “He’s put on about fifty pounds.” She shoved the photo over to me. Randall stood beside a heavyset woman with two heavyset blond boys, all of them holding fishing poles and smiling fat, silly grins. They looked ridiculously happy and sunburned. “Toodles was right,” Sandee said. “The woman does look like me.”
I held the picture closer to my face. The woman had Sandee’s hair and facial features, though she was shorter with ungainly, splayed feet. “Well, that’s that,” Sandee said. “He’s practically married himself.”
“I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“I didn’t want him to be happy. I wanted him to be miserable. I wanted him to suffer for his sins.”
“Pictures don’t tell everything.”
“Maybe he’ll die of a heart attack. Think he’s fat enough?”
“No.” I shook my head. “He’s mostly chubby.”
“Bastard.” She smacked the photograph. “Look how fucking content he is.”
I didn’t remind Sandee that she never really loved Randall, not the way she needed to love someone, because she wouldn’t have heard me, and besides, she already knew. I made her hot chocolate with the last of the Baileys, a nice, healthy shot, and then I bundled her up in the recliner with the extra quilt and a box of Kleenex. I curled up by her feet until she fell asleep and then crept back into the kitchen, turned on the lamp, and began painting again. The shadows I had been working on had dried to a rich magenta I found particularly appealing. I added small drips of yellow and white to lighten the shade and began spreading the shadow out toward the sky, adding more and more yellow so that it slowly faded into a pale, sultry gold. Then I called Francisco. It was the first time we had talked since our fight on Sunday. I didn’t say that I was sorry or that I had missed him.
“Sandee found out where Randall is,” I said instead.
“Carlita, it’s nice to hear your voice.” He sounded sleepy; it was 3:17 a.m. “Who’s Randall?”
“Her husband, the one that left three years ago, no note or anything. You want to hear or you wanna sleep?”
“I want to hear.” He laughed. “I think.”
“He’s living in Tonopah with a woman who looks like Sandee’s high school picture.”
“Makes sense.” His voice picked up. “Everything repeats, it’s the law of history. Everything has been done before, in one sense or another. It’s kind of depressing but it takes the pressure off.” He yawned. “Hey, I almost forgot. I Googled you. Your art. Your dirty-doll figurines.”
“Oh. I’m painting,” I told him, embarrassed. “For my show.”
“That’s the reason you did it, those paintings you left sliced up like a puzzle.”
“A pie. They’re shaped like a pie.”
“Right. I saw those funny creatures frolicking around the bottom and thought, Hmmm, those must be dirty dolls, and so I Googled and there they were.”
“Oh.” Obviously it wasn’t possible to separate my artistic life from my romantic life, at least not with Francisco.
“Come over,” he said.
I sucked in my breath but didn’t say anything.
“I just got back from a short trip to Bethel. They didn’t feed us on the plane. All I had for dinner was a stale donut.”
“I’m not cooking.”
“I know.”
“I’m supposed to be painting.”
“I know.”
“Maybe,” I stalled, “when I finish shadowing.”
“I’ll leave the door unlocked. Don’t mind the beasts. I usually throw socks to settle them down.”
I hung up and stared at my canvas. The Woman Running stared back with my eyes, my grandmother’s chin, my sister’s wrist, Sandee’s chest, and Stephanie’s mouth. Francisco was right: nothing was original or even new. We painted what was familiar, and that was how we lived. You couldn’t really blame Randall for picking a woman so much like Sandee; probably he couldn’t help himself. He was a weak man, and like most weak men he had to leave one woman in order to feel strong for the next. Maybe I would tell this to Sandee in the morning. I rinsed out my brushes and moved my canvas to the closet so that it didn’t accidentally fall over, and then I pulled on my coat and checked on Jay-Jay. He slept with the blanket kicked down to his knees, his hands curled slightly, as if waiting to receive something. I kissed each palm; then I slipped out the door and drove to Francisco’s without bothering to even change my underwear.
“I didn’t change my underwear,” I said after I let myself in the front door.
“I didn’t either.” In the soft glow of the night-light, his sheets were pale green. “Come on in.” He drew back the covers and I hesitated. He was wearing boxers with skulls printed across the front. “A gift from my brother, get it, because I’m an anthropologist.”
“I get it.” Lincoln pressed up behind me, his paw stepping on my foot. “Ouch,” I said, and then I kicked off my pants and crawled in beside Francisco. We lay beside one another without touching.
“This is odd,” he said. “Does it feel odd to you?”
“Yeah. Sex is always awkward at first.”
“Who said anything about sex?” And then he laughed. “Come here, Carlita.” His arms were around me, his legs twined around mine.
I suppose I should write about sleeping with Francisco for the first time and his skin, which is more golden than mine, and so warm. And his mouth, hungry and fierce and how it covered me, how it became mine, and what it took and what it gave and what it was like as I lay there with him, covered by him. I’d like to say that it was earth shattering, that lights blazed, that my head exploded, and while it was like that, it wasn’t like that at all. It was simple and pure and deep and urgent, and afterward, my stomach felt full, as if I had eaten a good meal.
Chapter 24
Tuesday, Feb. 14
“MOM! KILLER CHEWED UP my Valentine’s Day box,” Jay-Jay yelled this morning as I scraped the burned edges from the toast. He ran out and threw a crumbled shoebox covered in tissue-papered hearts on the counter. “You’ve gotta fix it. The bus comes in eight minutes.”
I pulled out the duct tape and got to work. Duct tape is the Alaskan staple. Every household has at least one roll, and since we live in a dilapidated trailer we have four: the standard gray plus green, yellow, and bright red, which I used to cut out hearts and paste them over the chew marks from Killer’s teeth. I added glitter and glued on conversation hearts. I was impressed; it actually looked good, but what else can you expect from duct tape?
“Cool,” he said, snatching it up and running out the door just as the bus zoomed by. Poor Jay-Jay; he’s been late forty-two times so far this year and recently brought home a note chiding me on my shoddy scheduling skills. Jay-Jay nudged me. “Mom, I don’t want to miss library exchange.”
On Tuesdays Jay-Jay’s gifted class is bussed to other schools’ gifted classes to do geeky and stimulating things like play Scrabble and chess and practice for the Junior Science Bowl the district puts on each year. I sighed and leaned over to tie my hiking boots. When I glanced up Laurel was standing by the kitchen table looking pale and unsteady. “I’m coming,” she said, tying the sash of her fuzzy green robe and heading for the door.
“A coat,” I cried. It was minus eighteen, and the car hadn’t had time to warm up properly.
“I’m always warm,” she said. “Pregnancy is nine months of having the flu and instead of getting better, you give birth.” She smiled brav
ely. “Come on Jay-Jay, let’s get you to school.”
Jay-Jay wasn’t pleased, since bringing Laurel meant he had to sit in the backseat. “It’s insulting to see everything a millisecond after you guys,” he complained.
After we dropped him off two minutes before the bell (“Run, Jay-Jay, run,” I shouted as I braked hard and left impressive skid marks across the parking lot), Laurel decided to have breakfast at Village Inn.
“I want a pancake. Just one. I need that doughy sponginess in my mouth.” Then she sagged against the headrest and closed her eyes. “Turn left on Northern Lights and go toward Forest Park.” Her voice was flat and cold. “Keep going through the stop sign. It’s the big monstrosity on the right.”
I knew immediately that she was directing me to Hank’s. “Are you sure?” I asked. “I don’t think you’re ready to face him.”
“Oh, I’m not facing him,” she said. “I have no desire to ever face him again. I need to get something back.”
“Clothes?” I couldn’t think of anything else that Laurel would risk such a confrontation over.
“No, my verve.”
“Y-your what?”
“My verve. You know, my courage. It’s Valentine’s Day, damn it, and I’m not going to let him win. I’m going to, well, I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’m going to do something, Carly. He owes me, don’t you see? Until I take back a payment I’ll never be able to live with myself. Don’t worry,” she said quickly, “I’m not going to do anything illegal, I’m just going to make myself known in sly and devious ways.” She smirked and looked over at me. I knew I should have talked her out of it, but she looked like herself for the first time in weeks. Her color was back, her eyes flashed, and her mouth curled into a smug little grin that reminded me of the Cheshire cat. I parked down the street from Hank’s house, which was large and imposing and painted a haughty burgundy, and we both got out. It was windy and the moon hung fat and low, even though the sky had already lightened. We were caught in that transitory stage of it no longer being night but not yet daylight either, a watery blue transition that’s impossible to capture in paint.
Dolls Behaving Badly Page 25
