Dolls Behaving Badly

by Cinthia Ritchie

  “Remember,” Laurel said. “If anyone stops us, we’re from the church.”

  “Which one?”

  “Huh?”

  “Which church?”

  “The church,” she said. “If you say it like that they’ll be too intimidated to ask which one.”

  “But you have your bathrobe on.”

  “Priests wear robes and I can, too.”

  I knew we were going to be caught, and I wondered if Hank would be mad enough to press charges. I imagined Barry bailing us out in his ridiculous checked chef pants. He would drink coffee and tell hunting stories with the policemen. We would be there forever. “Do you have your phone so I can make sure Stephanie’s around when Jay-Jay gets home from school?”

  Laurel looked at me as if I were crazy.

  “When we end up in jail,” I said. “Have you thought about that?”

  “It won’t happen.” She calmly wiped snow off a flowerpot, reached beneath it, and pulled out a key. “Come on, it’s Tuesday. No one should be home.”

  She slid the key in the lock, snapped her wrist, and opened the door. Three fat dachshunds waddled toward us. “Don’t get them excited or they’ll pee on the floor.”

  It was too late and three puddles spread out across the living room floor, which was covered with an oddly shaped green rug.

  “Good boys!” Laurel reached down to pet them, her voice high and childlike. “You pee on Daddy’s floor, okay, yes you do, you do.” She tugged me down the hall and up the stairs to a child’s room. “Wait here while I look.”

  “Look for what?”

  “I told you. My verve.”

  I sat on a bunk bed with a Buzz Lightyear quilt and read Curious George until Laurel yelled for me. She had the dresser opened and Hank’s underwear scattered around her feet. “Go find scissors in the kitchen,” she ordered.

  I knew we were going to cut holes in all of Hank’s underwear. It was in a novel we had both read years ago written by Margaret Atwood or one of those other plucky Canadian writers. I found two scissors, and Laurel and I spent the next half hour cutting small holes in all of Hank’s boxers, briefs, and socks; then we sliced the buttons from his shirts. We hesitated when we reached his pants. “Holes?” Laurel asked, holding up a pair of gray flannel slacks. “Or zipper?”

  We settled on the zipper and pulled and yanked until we managed to get them all off track. Then we folded and hung the damaged clothes back up again.

  “This doesn’t feel like enough.” Laurel tucked the last shirt back into the drawer. “Shouldn’t I feel triumphant and victorious?” When I didn’t answer, she continued, “Mostly I feel sad. Look at these ties! Geometric shapes, like dancing cough drops. This is the man who will be the father of my child, Carly.” She sat down on the bed and looked around as if she had no idea how she had gotten there. “What if my daughter has no fashion sense and everyone laughs at her and no one asks her to the prom?”

  I grabbed her elbow and maneuvered her down the stairs, through the hallway, and out the door, propping her up against the porch while I locked the front door. Halfway back home I realized I had forgotten to slip the key back beneath the flowerpot, but that didn’t matter. As soon as Hank saw the holes in his clothes he’d know who had done it. I hoped he would feel sorry about the way he had treated Laurel, but I doubted that would happen. Probably he was the kind of man who was unable to feel sorry for anyone except himself.

  I was late for work and caught Mr. Tims’s wrath.

  “It’s fucking Valentine’s Day, we’ve got a full house, and you show up whenever you goddamn feel like,” he yelled as I busily jotted down the specials and headed out to my section, which was already full. I smiled at all of the surly faces. Very few smiled back.

  Sandee was in an equally foul mood. “I’m afraid Joe’s going to propose,” she said as she slammed her tray on the kitchen counter.

  “You said that at Christmas and nothing happened.”

  “But he’s hokey enough to make a huge romantic gesture on Valentine’s Day. He’s spent time in the bush without running water. It kind of goes with the territory.”

  I had no idea how living without a flush toilet could cause someone to be romantic. “What did he say when you told him about Randall?” I used my apron to wipe green sauce from the side of a plate.

  “I haven’t told him yet.”

  “You can’t keep it from him.” I arranged plates across my tray. The enchilada sauce was a runny, sticky mess today. “You’re a couple now, and besides, he asked about the divorce. He asked you.”

  “It has nothing to do with him. It’s between Randall and me.” Sandee hoisted the tray to her shoulder and rushed out the swinging pantry door, a sprig of parsley sticking to the side of her face. As soon as I served my table, the hostess rushed over with a stack of menus. “You got four at Table Twelve and a loner at the corner booth,” she said.

  I wanted Francisco to be at my single-top but knew he was out working by Scammon Bay for the day and wouldn’t be home until late. Instead I found Barry dressed in his work uniform; his ridiculous chef’s hat sat neatly on the seat next to him. “Sorry to hog the table. I’ll be out in a couple minutes.”

  “You want anything?”

  “Nah, gotta get to work. A banquet’s coming in, a hundred twenty-five vegetarians, won’t even eat fish.” He shook his head sadly. “Here.” He reached into his coat and slid a small box toward me. I knew, from the shape, that it held jewelry.

  “I don’t understand,” I protested.

  “It’s your Grammy’s hairpins. They was behind the dresser when I cleared out of the house after we split. Kept wanting to give ’em to you but didn’t seem the right time.”

  I had carried Gramma’s hairpins around with me for years. They were silver and had tiny rubies along the edges, so small they were almost unnoticeable until the light hit them; then they shined. I had lost them when I was pregnant with Jay-Jay and had looked for weeks, weeping and mourning in my hormone-induced state.

  “Thanks,” I said, shrugging nonchalantly.

  “Ain’t nothing,” he murmured. “Jorge still make them green enchiladas with the minced onions?”

  “Want some?”

  “Nah, trying to lose the gut.” He patted his already shrinking belly. “Tell Jay-Jay to come over. I got a Valentine for him.”

  “Okay.”

  I watched him walk out, his pant cuffs dragging on the floor, and as soon as he was out of sight, I slipped the box into my apron pocket and hurried to the bar to pick up my drink order. I felt a twinge of grief, not regarding Barry as much as for the silly and foolish love we had shared, and how easily we had believed in dreams. Neither of us would ever love like that again. It was like surviving childhood and how you long to return even though you know it was never as idyllic as you imagine. Barry loved someone and I was in the process of loving someone, and our new loves would be more mature and stronger and more resilient. We would love with the love of impending middle age, of the knowledge that our bodies are fragile, and so are our hearts and spirits. We would be more tender, and more compassionate and more honest. We would be able to be all these things to someone else because we had loved each other first.

  Thursday, Feb. 16

  “Florida,” Laurel said, looking up from her 1,000 Baby Names book. “That’s a pretty name, isn’t it, Florida? Except everyone would associate it with a hurricane.”

  I was curled up in the living room tucked under quilts and blankets, picking yellow paint from beneath my fingernails. The city was still gripped in a cold spell, with nighttime temperatures dipping down to minus thirty; it hadn’t reached above minus eight in over a week. Yet within that brutal chill lay lavender-hued shadows that were like nothing else. Evenings when I walk the dog the inlet glows ghostly pale and lightens everything so that it almost feels as if we are walking through clouds. I am happy then, no one else around, the wind so sharp and cold my face aches beneath my scarf.

  The Oprah Gian
t says knowing what we want is the key to happiness.

  “It’s not what you think,” she said. “That’s merely a hodgepodge of family expectations, cultural norms, and your own defense mechanisms.”

  Instead, what we want is usually what we fear, and we fear it because we simultaneously believe we will fail to achieve it and think that we don’t deserve having it. I worried about my own happiness quest. Was I reaching too high? Not high enough? Did I want too much? Too little? Was I suffering from lack of ambition? Self-confidence?

  Gramma believed that donuts were the perfect symbol of happiness, and not fancy donuts but the simple cake version she made each Sunday, frying them up on the stove and blotting the grease off with napkins. A donut was sweet, nourishing, and light. It didn’t weigh you down or pretend to be anything it wasn’t, and it filled the belly in a slow and easy manner. You could eat three or four and not feel stuffed, which Gramma believed was the true worth of the cake donut, not that you could eat more but that while you were eating them you weren’t thinking of more.

  “I’m not having the amniocentesis test,” Laurel said when she noticed me looking at the ultrasound photos scattered over the coffee table. “The doctor recommended it, but what’s the point? So I can abort her if she’s not perfect? What kind of person would do that?”

  “There’s different levels of not perfect,” I said. “Some are pretty horrible. It’s a valid concern.”

  “No.” She pulled the quilt up around her neck. “I couldn’t do it.” She looked over at me. “Would you?”

  I thought of Jay-Jay and how I would love him no matter what he looked like or if he were in a wheelchair and hooked up to oxygen, his neck too weak to support his head, like one of the students at his school. I would still love him, still rejoice when he smiled, still pass his room late at night listening to the comforting sound of his breath. But everything would be different, and he would never have the chance to be the person he is now. Though who knows what qualities he would have been given to make up for it, what gifts he could still give. “I’d have the test,” I said quietly.

  “And if something were wrong?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose that depends on the odds of the baby surviving. Why are you asking me all this?”

  “You were the one who brought up happiness.” She reached for the popcorn bowl and balanced it on her rounded belly. “What happens if my baby dies?”

  “I thought we were talking about happiness.”

  “You can’t have one without the other.” She munched on popcorn. “Or maybe I’ll be the one who dies.”

  I shivered and moved closer to Laurel. “You’re not going to die and neither is your baby.”

  “You promise to raise her if I do?”

  “Why are you even thinking about this?” I reached in and grabbed a handful of popcorn.

  She shrugged and licked the salt from her fingers. For someone who thought she might die, she didn’t seem very upset. “It could happen, that’s all, and I’d be happy knowing she was with you. You might not realize this, Carly, but you’re doing okay.”

  “Sure, if you die, I’ll raise your daughter. Any special requests?” I asked sarcastically.

  “Don’t cut her hair short in the summer, like Mother used to make us do, and be sure she learns to swim when she’s young. And don’t let her wear high heels until she’s sixteen; I don’t want her ruining her feet.” She leaned over, picked up a glass of orange juice, and took a long drink. “Folic acid,” she said, and then she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “You’d think it would bother me, wouldn’t you, talking about my own death? But it doesn’t. You think it has to do with Gramma?”

  I looked at her carefully. “Have you seen her?”

  “No, but last night I dreamed she was running up and down the beach. She was younger and not as fat and had on one of those swimsuits with the skirts and she looked good, Carly, healthy and happy, and when I woke up I thought, Whew! When I die I can visit the buffet as often as I like because no one will give a damn what I look like in my swimsuit.”

  “Laurel asked me to raise her baby if she dies in childbirth,” I said to Francisco. We were curled in his bed reading old copies of National Geographic.

  “That must have been tough.”

  “I said I would of course, she’s my sister. But then I started thinking of all the things that could go wrong. She’s forty, you know.”

  “That’s not that old. She’s having it at a hospital, right?”

  “She wanted to have it in my bedroom but the doctor talked her out of it. Women still die in childbirth. You don’t hear about it, but they do.”

  “She’ll be fine.” He patted my thigh. “Before long that baby will take over your trailer, teething toys all over. Worse than having dogs, at least at first.” He laughed and turned toward me. “Have you ever thought of having another?”

  “Dog?”

  “No, baby. Another child.”

  “Yeah, I’ve thought about it.” My stomach lurched, as if remembering both the comfort and misery of pregnancy.

  “I’ve always wanted children. It just hasn’t happened.” He laughed wryly. “I have to know I’m leaving something behind. It’s the anthropologist in me.”

  “You could donate at a sperm bank,” I offered.

  “I’d rather do it the real way.” He snuggled against my shoulder. “You know, with a woman, not a specimen cup.”

  I tried to imagine it: a house, two small children running around the living room while big brother Jay-Jay tried to teach them complicated mathematical formulas. Francisco and me both older, heavier, and more weathered, but still loving toward one another, tender. Part of me wanted it; oh, I wanted it so much! But I was thirty-eight; by the time these children that hadn’t even been born yet went off to college I’d be almost sixty. I wasn’t sure I was ready to devote so much time to motherhood. I wanted to devote time to myself. I wanted to know who I was. I tried to explain this to Francisco.

  “It would be different with a man around,” he said. “You wouldn’t be in it alone.”

  “I know,” I said, and I did know. “It’s just that—”

  “Wait!” He slapped his forehead in mock parody. “We forgot the Valentines.” Since Francisco had been in Scammon Bay on Valentine’s Day, we had arranged to celebrate tonight, except we still hadn’t made it out of the bedroom.

  “Stay here,” he said, as if commanding the dogs. I watched his ass as he scurried out of the room, muscles flexing as he walked.

  “You’ve got a nice ass,” I yelled out to him.

  “Think so?” His voice was muffled. “My last girlfriend thought I was too bulky.” He reappeared with a huge and ungainly package wrapped in brown paper, which he placed gently on the bed. “Sorry it isn’t fancier. It was a bitch to wrap.”

  “Oh, well.” I started to get up to get my present, but Francisco motioned me back to the bed.

  “You first,” he said.

  I leaned forward and pulled the paper loose. Something jabbed my palm and my fingers hit the cool feel of bone. My heart sank. “Oh, how nice,” I started to say in a feigned voice but then I shut up because I saw what it was: a pelvic bone painted with a silver-lavender sky, the inlet in the background.

  “It’s beautiful.” I ran my hands over the curves.

  “Feel that right there?” He guided my fingers to small cracks that ran along in the inside of the bone. “Those indicate childbirth. This woman birthed at least one child, probably more. We know from the scratches. Childbirth scars you down to the bone.”

  When he said that, chills ran down my back.

  “It’s lovely,” I said. And it was, oddly yet truly lovely. “Now your turn.” I pulled a small box from my backpack and handed it over. “It’s wrapped better but don’t feel bad, okay?” He laughed and lifted the lid. Inside were the leftover slices of the painting I had been giving him, along with a bottle of glue and sealant. “Once you put it together, it will have seams
,” I explained. “It will look mosaic, like a tapestry or a quilt. The cool thing is that each segment tells its own story, and when you put it together, the story changes and—”

  His lips were on mine, hot and insistent. We made love again, the pelvic bone pressing my shoulder so that it almost felt like a hand reaching out, not so much for Francisco or me but for the heat between us and, dare I say it? The love.

  Letter #12

  Dear Carla Richards:

  Holy stethoscope!

  Excuse our excitement, but your February payment not only arrived on time but was made out over the amount due.

  We have therefore credited your account $9.75, available at the time of your next appointment.

  Thank you for choosing Far North Pediatrics, where your children are our children.

  Dr. Jennison and Dr. Harrison

  Far North Pediatrics

  P.S. Tell Jay-Jay we are all rooting for him at the spelling bee. Break a vowel, Jay-Jay!

  Chapter 25

  Saturday, Feb. 18

  “D-O-D-E-C-A-R-C-H-Y,” JAY-JAY SPELLED at the breakfast table this morning. “C-y-n-o-d-o-n-t. G-u-e-n-o-n.”

  Next Friday was the Alaska State Spelling Bee, and Jay-Jay was representing his school, having beaten out the top two sixth graders last month at the school bee. He had looked so small standing up on the stage with the older kids; he had to stand on his tiptoes to reach the microphone.

  “It’s totally random.” He looked up from his sample word booklet. “They’ll have these easy words and then wham! They’ll throw in a hard one. Cruel and crayon, those are easy, you don’t even have to think, and then suddenly it’s cruciverbalist.”

  “It seems kind of mean,” Stephanie said. “No one, like, ever uses those words, at least not real people.”

  “It’s not about the words,” Jay-Jay said. “It’s about the preparation. You get rewarded for your commitment.”