Dora: A Headcase

by Lidia Yuknavitch

  When this guy walks, he walks slowly, one shoulder at a time. His hands sorta … swing … not like your hands or my hands. Treasure hands. He has on a brushed silver suit coat and black pants and a crisp, white shirt. No tie. All the other mantards in the place have ties on. Not this guy. Silver hair cut close to his head. But what gives me a pinch of glee is, he walks straight into the Sig scene. He puts his treasure hand on Sig’s shoulder. I pull my iPhone out to short film it.

  I kick Ave Maria under the table and lean over and go, “Hey. That’s him.”

  She looks in the direction I’m pointing my iPhone. “Him who? Your grandpa?”

  “My shrink.”

  She turns to look. “The hot guy or the geezard?”

  “Geezard.”

  That’s when god really does crap.

  Sig, bless his deflated balloon self, stands up, embraces the man in that weird guy on guy pretend hug way, stares into his eyes for a moment, sways slightly, and fucking faints.

  Yep, you heard me. The Sig drops like a log to the floor.

  I know. “Holy shit holy shit,” I go, slugging Ave Maria in the bicep.

  “Awesome,” Ave Maria goes. Her lushofamother burps and looks around making fish lips in confusion.

  I suddenly feel like jumping to my feet and yelling “Herr Doktor!” at the top of my lungs. Ave Maria gets a contact high from my excitement and starts her random high notes thing. I’m telling you, I almost pee my fucking pants.

  The Sig … my Sig … is out cold.

  All kinds of hell breaks loose in the swank restaurant as crowwaiters descend to clean up the scene. It’s easy to retrieve my beloved H4n. I’m invisible. I can’t fucking believe my luck. Whatever that ferret dude said to Sig, it was big. And whoever that silvery guy is, he made Siggy … swoon like a goddamned little girl. Whatever my H4n has on it is gonna be really, really good. I’m smiling so big it’s obscene.

  You know what? Fuck the mix tape. Things have changed. What I’ve got is way bigger than that. That’s kid stuff. What I’ve got on my hands is real material. I’ve got … oh hell yes. I’ve got a roman à clef. And the key, is Sig. I’m not making a sound mix for a rave. I’m making a motherfucking man movie. Of him.

  As we exit the room, Ave Maria’s mother swimming us to the door and Ave Maria shooting her high notes, I turn to face the eaters in Eden one last time, high kick the air for effect, and yell KAPOW.

  9.

  IN MARLENE’S KITCHEN I TAKE THE ZOOM H4N OUT OF my Dora purse and stand there sort of bouncing from foot to foot like a tard kid. I’m excited. You know, excited like kids are when they wake up and see snow. The H4n – it’s black and sleek. It’s got a shock-resistant rubberized body. About the size of a spy rat. If rats were spy cyborgs. There’s a bitchin’ LCD display and the two mics are on the top – one points left and the other right – towards each other – two little silver cocks.

  Marlene’s got an indigo silk kimono on and a blonde braid helmet – like Heidi. I mean if Heidi was a black tranny. Marlene showed me the Shirley Temple “Heidi.” It’s awesome. Orphan Heidi is left at her grandfather’s mountain cabin by her mean aunt Dete. The old man is a grump. Slowly, he grows to love Heidi. Evil Dete returns and farms Heidi out as a companion for Klara, a rad wheelchair girl. The housekeeper, Frau Rottenmeier – yeah, I know – fucking hates Heidi. When Heidi teaches Klara to walk again, Frau Rottenmeier tries to sell Heidi to gypsies. But her grandfather sacks up, sells all his shit, and finds her.

  Heidi should have gone with the gypsies.

  I don’t have braids. Or hair. I’m still bald … more than a chemo head though. I rub my head for luck. “You ready to hear it?” I go, holding my finger over the playback button.

  “Yes Lamskotelet,” Marlene goes, but then she says “wait!” and she runs around the kitchen gathering two fluted glasses and some red shit in a bottle from the fridge.

  “Um, what’s that?” I say, pointing to the cough syrup looking stuff.

  “Kirsch! We are celebrating your capture!”

  Kirsch, it turns out, is German for cherry water. Distilled from black morello cherries and their pits. You’d think it would taste sweet, but it doesn’t. It tastes like almonds and pepper. We toast. She pours again. We toast again. She pours again. My head’s kinda hot and my cheeks flush. She laughs the Marlene laugh. I laugh a laugh I’ve never heard come out of me before.

  Whoever we are right then, I suddenly wish it wouldn’t end. I grin so big I feel air all through my teeth. I push playback. The first voice is the ferret guy’s from the restaurant.

  The H4n goes, “ What are you drinking, you wily bastard? Scotch? Lemme get you a scotch. Sigmund, I gotta tell you, you’re gonna want a stiffie when you hear what I’ve got. It’s hot, baby, I’m telling you it’s hot.”

  “Am I to infer that the publisher has purchased my collection of case studies?”

  Sound of an old man’s hands rubbing briskly together.

  I hit pause. I’m nervous. Who knows why. I take a deep breath. I look across the kitchen table at Marlene. She smiles. I finish off my cough syrup. I can feel it sticky on my upper lip. I hit play again.

  “Think bigger, Sigmund.”

  Sound of ice spinning maniacally in a glass.

  “I told you, I’ve found the ultimate case study. This is the one that will prove to be the pièce de résistance – this exquisite plum,” the recorder says.

  I jam my finger on the pause button of the H4n. It scoots across the table. “Plum? Which one of us is his plum?”

  I sit staring at the H4n on Marlene’s table. Marlene wears an expression of concern. I stand up. I sit down. “Gimme another shot of that cherry shit. I think I’m going to need it.” She pours. Rain beats on the kitchen window. My head itches. My cheeks suddenly feel like fucking burning plums.

  I hit playback. Siggy’s voice sounds tight and screechy.

  “What ‘bigger picture?’ Is it the publisher? Jackasses. The prestige I have brought to them over the years!”

  Sound of old man fist hitting table.

  “Sigmund. Sig. My friend. Settle down. Will ya? It’s not even about the book anymore. Books are dead, Sig, books are dead.”

  Sound of dishes being cleared at nearby table.

  “Do you mean MY book? Is MY book dead? Listen you little money-grubbing weasel – ”

  Sound of table wear rattling.

  I hit pause. This time I’m laughing. But my laugh sounds tight and raw.

  Marlene tilts her head. “Liebchen,” she asks.

  “Yeah?” I go.

  “Are you sure this is what you want?”

  I cough. “I’m sure,” I go. Something in my head ticks. Then I punch the playback.

  The H4n jumps to life. “Sig! Calm down, calm down! Here – here’s your drink. Drink it. No, really. Get a good gulp down. Stop waving your arms around! You don’t want to make a scene, do you? Cheers, old man. Raise a glass. It’s a celebration.”

  Sound of gulping.

  “OK. You OK now? OK. Here’s the gig, baby. We’ve been picked up. Biggest production company in television.”

  Sound of waiters bringing food.

  “What? What in the world does that mean? What does television have to do with me?”

  “What’s television got to do with you? Hello? Dr. Phil? Dr. Ruth? Dr. Oz? Intervention? Television is the new paid reality, my friend. And I just bought you your ticket in. Once Oprah gets her ass out there’s going to be a huge vacuum … and we’re gonna fill that air, baby.”

  Sound of strained breathing and coughing.

  Sound of hand slapping back.

  “Sigmund? Sig? You all right buddy? I know! I can’t believe it either. You gonna make it? Sig. Buddy. Here – for christ’s sake – have a little blow. It will calm you the fuck down.”

  Old man snorting sound. Old man coughing sound.

  “Sigmund! My man! Drink some water. Lemme lay it out for you. I pitched you! Get it? They want you, Sig. They really,
really want you. One year contract in the bag. Second year optioned.”

  “But my book… my life’s work … I would never agree to this! It’s the epitome of unethical!”

  “Whoa! Sig! This blows your book out of the water! Are you even listening to me? Hello? Those case studies you are so proud of? They’re not going to die some dusty old death. They’re going live. We’re getting ‘em scripted and re-enacted. One a week. We need a new ‘you,’ but I got that covered … and we’ll need to … you know, change some stuff around so we don’t get our asses sued or anything, but…”

  “It’s unethical. It’s out of the question. ”

  Sound of old man slamming scotch.

  “What did you mean by a ‘new me’?”

  “It’s big money.”

  Coughing.

  “Big. Money.”

  Coughing.

  “The clincher is your teen little monster girl. The other case studies look like zombies compared to her. So the only catch is, you have to bag that one. I mean nail that girl. When I told them what she looks like and the kind of shit she pulls? POW. Without her, we don’t have shit.”

  I’m across the kitchen by now. “STOP it,” I yell. Marlene jams her blue lacquered nail on the pause button. The H4n slides across the table like it’s trying to run. I stomp back to the table. I pick the H4n up. I want to punch it or throw it across the room. I slam it back down. I begin to cough. Hack, actually. Whoppers. “Rewind it.” Marlene rewinds. “Play that shit again. Because I can’t believe my fucking ears.”

  Before I realize what I’m doing I pick up the bottle of cough syrup and chuck it across the room. It shatters like kid wishes all over her white wall.

  “Lamskotelet!” Marlene says.

  I stare at the red stain I’ve made. Fucking Rorschach.

  “Fuck. I’m sorry.” I get all down on the floor and start picking up the glass shards. My throat gets tight. My head feels like it has a rubber band around it. My eyes are watering like a girl’s. I’m coughing and coughing. I cut my hand pretty much immediately. Of course. Marlene comes over and takes my hands in hers and walks me to the kitchen sink. She runs cold water over my hand and thumb. Blood rivers down her drain.

  “Everybody uses everybody until we’re all just a bunch of used up shit sacks waiting to go to dirt,” I go.

  Marlene doesn’t say anything. She dries my hands. She reaches under the sink and gets a first aid kit and wraps my cut up hand with a gauze bandage, slowly. I stare at the little red cleft in my hand. Don’t cry, pussy.

  Then a numb comes. It’s a numb I know. It’s the numb of a girl checking out. Whatever they say next can’t fucking touch me. I’m long gone. One way or another, I will end this. But on my terms. I turn the volume up. Marlene picks up glass on the floor. The next voice is Sig’s. His voice is all over the map.

  “I find that last comment entirely offensive. This is intolerable. You have no right to talk about any client in such a way – ”

  For a second I think the Sig is going to rescue me. Like Heidi’s Grandpa. Can you beat that?

  “ – but what was it you said earlier – what did you mean a new ‘you?’ You mean me?”

  “New you? What I meant was, well we can’t … Sig, I mean, look. You’re one big brain with a whole fucking library of shit stuck up in that noggin, but you’re not exactly a visual magnet, right? But don’t worry about that. I found someone – another client of mine – who is very interested. He was made for TV. Oh – and he’s in your line of work.”

  “You found an actor who is a psychotherapist?”

  “ What? Fuck no. I found a dream guy. What’s that shit you ordered? Is that the Chicken Kiev? It looks like paste. All this frou-frou new food looks like crap to me. I should have ordered a fucking steak.”

  Sound of old man half choking on food.

  “Symbols and brain waves and talkity talk. Like you. Only he’s a looker. No offense. Actually, you already know each other. Hey! Look! Here he comes now. Hope you don’t mind, I invited him to join us. To share the news … I’ll get us all another round.”

  Sound of chairs being pushed back.

  I steal a glance at Marlene. I remember from the restaurant. It’s the silvery hot guy. I crank the volume.

  “Sigisimund! My old friend. So very good to see you!”

  “My … I … Jung?”

  Sound of body falling to the floor.

  The H4n shuts off.

  Marlene looks at me.

  I look at Marlene.

  “That’s where he fucking fainted,” I go.

  “Liebchen, are you well?” she asks.

  I bend down on the ground. I calmly put my beloved H4n – maybe the only thing in the world besides Marlene that I trust – into my backpack. I stand up. I look out of the kitchen window. I wish it was snowing. I mean I wish it kid hard. But it’s still just stupid raining. Well, there’s more than one place to find white stuff.

  Marlene and I lock eyes.

  “Marlene?” I go.

  “Liebchen?” she answers.

  “I’m gonna need to borrow one of your wigs. Can you help me pick one? One that, you know, will make me not look anything like me?”

  “Certainly. I happen to be very good at disguises. Who do you want look like?” she asks.

  I suck some blood on my thumb. Almond pepper. Kirsch Wasser.

  “Dora,” I go. “I want to look like Dora. They want a show, I’ll give them one.”

  10.

  IF YOU WANT TO STALK SOMEONE PROPER, ONE WORD for you: wigs.

  Lucky for me, Marlene’s got lots of’em. She’s got platinum blond Marilyn Monroes and fire engine red beehives and long jet blacks with Bettie Page bangs. She’s got blue hair and pink hair and hair the color of purple Slurpees. She’s got a foot wide’fro and a spiky punk black and blue. She’s got Liz Taylors and Zsa Zsas. She’s got long hair and short hair and tall hair and soft trusses and bobs and shags and even this braid down to your ass that would make a man yell RAPUNZEL half a mile away.

  Obviously she uses them for her gigs at the tranny jazz club.

  I have other plans. With a wig, you can be anyone.

  My mother once lost all of her hairs. It came out in patches at first, then great clumps. So she cut it short – then it began to look refugee. They said it was psychosomatic. They said it was stress. They said she made her own hair fall out of her head. It happened three years ago. When my father made his choice with Mrs. K.

  It grew back the next year. Slowly. But her eyes never were the same.

  There’s a book my mother read to me as a kid. At least at first. I still have it. It’s under my bed. It’s a little trashed, but still cool. Are You My Mother? You know it? It’s about a pathetic baby bird. The kid bird hatches while the mom is gone out of the nest. He’s clueless. He goes looking for her. He asks a kitten, a hen, a dog, and a cow if they are his mother. They go, “No.” Then he asks a shitty old car, a boat and a plane, and at last, a fucking power shovel. The shovel dumps him back into his nest and the absent mother returns.

  It’s a good book. But the kid bird is pretty much a tard.

  Marlene’s got an old school man’s silk smoking jacket on and a Marlene Dietrich wig and a cigarette in a long thin cig holder.

  Three magnificent wigs sit on her kitchen table, staring up at us, headless.

  I look down at the wigs on Marlene’s table. I rub my stubbled head. This is the closest I have ever come to looking like my mother. Er how she did hairless, anyway. Sometimes I think that’s why I did it. Whatever. I study the wig selections.

  Wig one: a black as crows chin-length blunt cut. Very smarty looking. Would look great with black-rimmed smarty glasses and a shiny black raincoat. And boots. Kinda Emma Peel from The Avengers.

  Wig two: shoulder length strawberry with color weave highlights – kinda preppy. Would need cashmere sweater and a thin strand of pearls. Think Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club.

  But it’s wig three tha
t’s dominating the others. Totally badass feathered and frosted. Christ. It’s so … man. It’s so hot … it’s so 80s … it’s so motherfucking Ultimate Farrah. It looks like it might lift off the table, achieve loft, and fly around the room.

  “Think I could pull that bad boy off?” I say, pointing to it. “What do they even call that, frosted?” The other wigs look dejected and jealous.

  “That depends,” Marlene says, tilting her head to the side, touching her blue Lee nails against her Coca- Cola red lips, “if you wear this you will turn heads. People can’t help themselves. They are nostalgic for the times with big hair.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean … that’s not necessarily a good thing …”

  “When trying not to be seen.” She taps her lips. Her eyelashes seem longer than my thumbs.

  “Yup.”

  “On the other hand,” Marlene walks around the table of wigs inspecting them, kinda picking at the other two, “it looks the least like you, Lamskotelet. Your Herr Doktor would never recognize the you under this hair. No one would. Not even I would.” She strokes the wings of it.

  We stare at it there on the table.

  I lift the Farrah up off of the table balancing it on my fist and hold it slightly higher than my skull in front of me. It shimmers under the kitchen light. Its wings positively radiant. It asks me its question. Can you, be me?

  Somehow it is very solemn, this choice, who to be, who not to be.

  “Come, we will try it,” Marlene says, and shoulders me toward the bathroom mirror.

  The second it’s on my head we both know it. I don’t care if I have to wear a fucking jumpsuit with platforms and sing Bee Gees. Sometimes you just know things. This is the one.

  First of all, it’s heavy. In a good way. Like you are more important than usual. And my whole face looks different. I look like a woman with feathered bangs. A woman who will wear a lot of mascara and eye liner. A woman who is going to need a shitload of lip gloss. But there’s something else going on, too.