Dolls Behaving Badly

by Cinthia Ritchie

  “A toast,” he yelled, and he stood there, unsure of what to say. Finally he sat back down, grabbed Toodles’s hand on one side and Jay-Jay’s on the other. “I meant a prayer,” he said. “For the food.”

  We held hands and bowed our heads as Barry cleared his throat once, and then twice. “Bless this, ah, food,” he stammered. “Ah, and all the hard work Carly done and, ah…”

  Jay-Jay’s voice suddenly rang out, clear and smooth. “Bless this food, and may it nourish our souls and hearts with praise,” he sang.

  I looked up, surprised.

  “Gifted sessions at the Bible school.” He shrugged.

  We ate and talked, ate and argued, ate and told jokes and laughed. Laurel worried about her baby’s feet, Sandee complained about work, Stephanie revealed plans to ambush Tobias Wolff at Stanford, and Jay-Jay offered an analysis of his fruit-fly research that none of us understood, but still we listened and we praised.

  “That reminds me of a bear problem out by Tok,” Joe began as Sandee rolled her eyes.

  I thought of the Oprah Giant’s last blog post. “Happiness is like trying to catch the fog,” she wrote in purple and pink font. “You can walk and walk and never realize you’ve reached it until you look back.”

  Was happiness really that simple? I pushed back my plate and headed to the kitchen for dessert.

  “Need help?” Toodles asked, but I motioned her down with my hand. I had a feeling that Gramma would be waiting in the kitchen and she was, standing by the sink, wearing the same awful dress she had on at my gallery opening.

  “That man, he a looker.” She pointed at Francisco. “Like the Galloping Gourmet if he got skinny.”

  I shrugged. “He’s okay.”

  “This ain’t so good.” She pinched the chrusciki with her fingers. “Too heavy.”

  “It’s fine.” I shooed her hands away. It was one of my favorite desserts, a bow-shaped pastry Gramma called angel wings. After I sprinkled on powdered sugar, I laid my hand on her fat shoulder.

  “I saw her,” I said softly. “I saw Lizzie.”

  Gramma clutched her throat. “Ach,” she groaned. “What she say?”

  I wasn’t sure how much to tell her. “She died a hero but don’t worry, it was quick.”

  I expected Gramma to cry, but she wiped her finger over the pastries and licked off the sugar instead. “That why you make the chrusciki,” she said. “You have a celebrity.”

  “Celebration,” I corrected. When I turned back, she was gone.

  “Do widzenia,” I whispered. Good-bye.

  I carried the plate out to the living room. Chrusciki is a dessert Gramma reserved for special occasions, meant to be eaten with the ones you love. She believed the pastry wings spread open and flew through the belly.

  I told this story as I served the pastry. “If you place your hands on your stomach, you supposedly feel angels,” I said.

  “Wild.” Stephanie put down her fork and placed her hand across her belly. Laurel and Jay-Jay did the same. We sat there, all of us, our hands against our bellies as we waited to feel the flutter of angel wings.

  Gramma’s Chrusciki (Angel Wings)

  6 egg yolks

  1–2 whole eggs

  3 cups flour

  Pinch of salt

  ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

  ½ cup sour cream

  Cooking oil

  2 teaspoons sugar

  ⅛ teaspoon anise

  Pinch of cinnamon

  Powdered sugar (for topping)

  Separate eggs, beat yolks, and slowly fold in the rest of the ingredients except for sugar, anise, and cinnamon. Knead until smooth and then roll out, cut into strips, and fold into bow-like shapes. Fry in hot oil until browned and sprinkle with cinnamon, powdered sugar, and anise.

  Makes enough for one single mother and her beautiful son; one pregnant sister and her soon-to-be-born daughter; one best friend and her fish-and-game husband; one teenage surrogate daughter and her, like, totally awesome boyfriend; one ex-​husband and his new girlfriend; one bone-loving anthropologist; and one fat, hungry Polish ghost.

  Reading Group Guide

  Discussion Questions

  When she first begins her diary, Carla hopes that it will bring her solace. Do you think keeping a diary is mostly therapeutic, or can diaries bring more than just comfort? Have you ever kept a diary?

  Carla’s grandmother used to say that “sins make you fat.” What did she mean by this? What “sins” are weighing Carla down?

  Carla and Sandee are both initially hesitant about falling in love again. How do their past experiences with men differ? How does each woman try to protect herself from future heartache?

  When talking about her relationship with Barry, Carla says that divorce is “not simple… and the break is never clean.” Is this always true of divorce, or is there something about their relationship in particular that prevents the two of them from moving on?

  What finally convinces Carla to agree to a date with Francisco? Why do you think she gives him another chance after he stands her up?

  Carla’s Gramma visits her four times after her death—the night Jay-Jay was born, during Laurel’s appointment at the clinic, at the gallery show, and at the final dinner. What do you think these occasions have in common? Does Carla believe she is really seeing her grandmother’s ghost?

  Throughout the novel, Carla is afraid of what people will think of her when they find out she makes dirty dolls. Why do you think she continues to do it, when there are other, less risqué ways to make extra money?

  Why is Carla so quick to welcome Stephanie into the family when she has so many others to take care of? Do you think her attitude toward Stephanie would be different if Carla hadn’t had an abortion?

  According to the Oprah Giant, it is a common myth that people will be happy when good things happen to them. Do you agree with the Oprah Giant? Where does happiness come from, if not from positive experiences and good fortune?

  Compare Carla and Laurel’s relationship at the beginning of the novel with their relationship at the end of the novel. What has changed between them? How has Laurel’s situation allowed her to better understand her sister?

  Carla is never quite sure who the woman in her paintings is. Who do you think the woman running with a box represents? What is she running from?

  Author Q&A

  Carla starts keeping a diary as an emotional exercise, but it gets very juicy very quickly. How would your own diary compare to Carla’s?

  Oddly enough, I’ve never kept a diary, not even as a young girl. I’ve tried journaling, but it felt too self-conscious, as if I were talking to myself, though I suppose all writing is talking to oneself. Still, if I did keep a diary, I’m sure it would venture toward juiciness. When my son was younger and I needed extra money, I wrote erotica. Some of this I published under my own name, and during PTA meetings and school functions, I lived in fear of angry mothers with Pokémon notebooks banishing me from the room. There were also a few horrible months when, had anyone Googled my name (and since I was a news reporter at the time it’s inevitable that people had Googled my name), an erotic poem of mine entitled “Ode to My…” Well, okay, needless to say the C-word appeared in the title, and this C-word also appeared as the top link to my name. I’d like to say that this prompted me to stop writing erotica, but alas, it didn’t.

  Food plays a very prominent role throughout the novel. Is cooking a passion of yours? Where did the recipes come from?

  I’m a vegetarian who veers toward the vegan side, and I love to eat. I love my vegetables. I was the kid in elementary school who ate everyone’s spinach at lunch, which made me extremely popular. When depressed, I walk through the supermarket produce aisles and it always perks me up: all those blushing peaches and fragrant oranges, those round and firm radishes, those phallic cucumbers. Food is so erotic. We slide it in through our lips. We caress it with our tongues. We close our eyes and swallow.

  Ironically, for all my l
ove of food, I am a lousy cook, a truly lousy cook. I actually messed up Jell-O once when my son was sick. Which is why I live on stir-fry. And if I overcook it (which I so often do), I simply douse it in hot sauce before chowing down.

  The recipes in the book? I made them up, mostly based on what I remembered from childhood. While I might be a horrible cook, I am a fairly decent baker. However, the recipes aren’t meant to be perfect, or even to turn out each time. Like love, recipes are fickle. Sometimes they bless you and other times they turn on you. I wanted this to be the case with Carla’s recipes, and I wanted that very unpredictability to mirror the tone of the book.

  In the book, you claim that women dress up their fantasies down to the “the shape of the barrettes and the shades of toenail polish.” Out of curiosity, what do the barrettes and nail polish look like in your fantasies?

  Well, since I’m a runner my fantasies usually involve a pair of Nike running shoes and a tattered hair tie, and my nail polish is always chipped. But my fantasies are very detailed. I spend a lot of time deciding on the outfits: A running skirt or shorts? Tank top or sports bra? A Garmin or a regular old running watch? As I mentioned in the book, how the man looks doesn’t matter so much, as long as all of his parts are strong and healthy. That said, I wouldn’t chase Steve Prefontaine out of my fantasies unless, of course, his outfit didn’t coordinate with mine.

  Carla appears to have a very strong sense of family, even though her relationship with her sister is a little trying. Are you very close with your own family? Are there any Laurels in the bunch?

  I am close to my two sisters (my third, and middle, sister died ten years ago), and my youngest sister and I are very, very close. I don’t really have a Laurel in my family, though I think that we all harbor bits of Laurel inside ourselves, you know, the way we try to keep our lives neat and controlled while simultaneously making choices that introduce chaos. I read somewhere that love burns brightest inside our mess, and I wanted to show that with Laurel. I wanted to drag her through the mud. I wanted to force her to peel off her armor and see the beauty of her own complexities.

  I love the fact that Carla and Laurel have a “trying” relationship. Don’t most of us, with the ones we love the most? Don’t we reserve our worst behaviors for those with whom we feel the safest, those we know will accept us no matter what?

  I suppose I wanted to create a world where everyone was flawed and issues didn’t magically resolve themselves, a world that resembled one of Gramma’s recipes. Because really, how many people’s lives follow a narrative arc?

  You have a son, though he’s a bit older than Jay-Jay. How much of Jay-Jay was inspired by your own son? More importantly, can your son spell quinquagesimal?

  Yes, I do have a son, who is in college now, and yes, I originally based parts of Jay-Jay on him, though the more I wrote, the more Jay-Jay became his own self. I was a single mother and we lived in a small and cluttered house, and everywhere there was mess and books and dog hair, and things were always breaking down and we never had enough money, yet my son remained stoically optimistic and cheerful. I remember once the toilet overflowed and sewage seeped into the house; the stink was awful and many of our things were ruined, yet my son sat on the kitchen counter happily taking apart the toaster, and the first thing he said to me was, “Mom, what’s for lunch?”

  This is what I wanted to capture with Jay-Jay, the sense of vulnerability coupled with an almost adult wisdom, that innocent sense of truly believing we are the shapers of our own fate. Yet I also wanted Jay-Jay to contrast Carla’s faults because, face it, children recognize their parents’ failings and weaknesses, and they forgive us in ways we are unable to forgive ourselves.

  Can my son spell quinquagesimal? Unfortunately, he probably can.

  Where did the idea for the dirty dolls come from? Are there any Barbie doll parts on your kitchen table?

  Years ago one of the Anchorage art galleries put out a call for entries for a Barbie-doll-themed show. I decided to submit a piece, even though I’m even worse at art than I am at cooking. I bought a couple of Barbie dolls, some felt and glitter, and got to work. Before long the kitchen overflowed with Barbie and Ken parts, colored paper, doll clothes, and stray shoes, along with tubes of expensive paint, brushes, and my son’s X-Acto knife. One night, as I was in the process of attaching multiple breasts to Ken’s chest, my son walked in. It was about three a.m. and I huddled on the dirty kitchen floor, dog hair sticking to my bare legs, naked doll arms and legs scattered around me.

  “Mom?” My son stepped forward, his foot flattening a bald Barbie head. I ignored him and pounded Ken’s torso into submission. “Mom?” my son said again. “I don’t think you’re okay.”

  The truth is, I wasn’t okay at all. I fell asleep on the floor that night and when I woke the next morning I saw it all for what it was: paint smears and doll parts jammed this way and that and behind it all, me pretending to be someone I wasn’t. I threw everything away, though the episode stayed with me, not the actual making of the dolls but how quickly I had become possessed by it, almost as if part of my childhood forever lurked in my mind, waiting to mix with my adult self.

  I don’t have any Barbie doll parts on my kitchen table, though I do have a Barbie doll sitting on the mantel over the fireplace, and for years I kept a chewed-up Barbie doll arm on my bookshelf. The cat finally dragged it off. I haven’t seen it since.

  For the novel’s setting, you chose your home state of Alaska. How do you think this setting influences the characters and the story in a way that another state wouldn’t?

  Well, Alaska is a peculiar and unique place filled with peculiar and unique characters. There’s a saying up here about the men: the odds are good and the goods are odd. And maybe it’s the freedom of so much vast and open land, so much wilderness at our back door, but people up here allow you to be yourself. It’s one of the greatest gifts of Alaska. Nonconformity is welcomed. Oddness is celebrated, especially in smaller towns. (I recently moved back to Anchorage after living for almost two years in a small, coastal Alaska community at the end of the road system and it truly was like stepping inside a Northern Exposure episode.)

  I set Dolls Behaving Badly in Alaska because I wanted my characters to move about less restrained than had they, say, lived in a lower forty-eight city. I also wanted to develop personalities that were quirky yet believable from an Alaskan sensibility. You could plunk Carla, Barry, or Francisco down anywhere in Alaska and they’d fit in.

  Alaska also feels closer to the spirit world. There are so many contrasts and extremes, so many variations of light and dark, cold and colder, that it’s easy to believe in ghosts, easy to expect the unexpected. Does Gramma’s ghost really appear or does Carla simply imagine it all? Does it even matter? In Alaska, people have spiritual epiphanies while climbing mountains and kayaking alongside whales. Why not while in the bathroom at an abortion clinic?

  Mostly, I set the book in Alaska because it’s the only place I’ve ever lived that’s felt like home. I know it sounds corny but I wanted to give the same to my characters; I wanted to tuck them somewhere safe and wondrous, yet at the same time I wanted an environment that would offer struggle and challenge. It was inevitable that I chose Alaska.

  Francisco and Carla have an unconventional courtship, which is made all the more apparent by his gift of human bones. What is the strangest gift you’ve ever received from a man?

  Well, I’m a bit unconventional and I do live in Alaska, so my idea of a gift isn’t flowers, chocolate, or jewelry but real things, things associated with the natural world: a stone from the top of a mountain and a jellyfish floating around an old ceramic bowl. I’ve also received strands of wolf hair, dried moose poop, pieces of bear scat, and an almost perfectly preserved baby moose skull. Are those strange? I dunno. Except for the jellyfish, which died, I still have all of them.

  Three of the central female characters in the novel, Carla, Sandee, and Laurel, each have an unsuccessful first marriage, though at
least one of them finds love again. Was this a conscious decision on your part? Is there a specific message you want your readers to take away about love and marriage?

  I wanted to write a book that centered on women finding strength within themselves. I wanted them to lean on one another and argue with one another, to both fail and succeed, and do so regardless of, or maybe in spite of, men. Too many books end with the fairy tale, the woman meeting the “perfect” man, and when you look around, you realize how misguided that is. Most of us do find love, but we find it at the wrong time or with the wrong person, and it’s never perfect. If anything, love is messy. It complicates life. It forces change. It spirals out of control.

  I wanted my readers to know that it’s okay to be alone, that having a man in your life is a gift but so are so many other things: sisters and sons, neighborhood babysitters and dead grandmothers bearing sugar-laced recipes.

  Mostly, though, I wanted to celebrate life. I wanted to highlight small and ordinary moments because I think too many women spend too much time worrying and obsessing about how they look and if their hips are too fat or their teeth white enough that they forget to live their own lives. I wanted to create a world filled with ordinary women living ordinary lives and, in the midst of doing just that, finding small pieces of extraordinary joy and strength.

  One of my favorite parts of the book is when Stephanie punches the protester at the abortion clinic. I love the solidarity of the act, and how blasé she is about it: she simply marches up and does what needs to be done. I suppose this is the message I want to get across: To behave badly. But to do so with love.

  Author’s Note

  The idea for Dolls Behaving Badly came to me in the bathroom. In the bathtub, to be exact. I was a single mother working double shifts at an Anchorage restaurant, and each night after I put my son to bed I filled the bathtub with hot water, lay back, and read novels. Sometimes I stayed there for hours.