Doll Hearts Page 17

  I shake my head, throw my palms over my eyes, and drag my fingers down my face. I try not to scream about the fact that I have an incompetent child for a mother. But there’s no denying it any longer. It’s official. I am the parent and she is the child. Christ on a shingle.

  “You know what?” I say, laughing. “My friend is waiting and I can’t do this right now.”

  I push past her as she slides down the doorjamb. I clomp back through the hallway and on my way through, reach out and pull a doll box off the shelf. I throw Pregnant Barbie over my shoulder, letting her tumble god-knows-where behind me.

  “This discussion isn’t over!” I yell. Then I kick a lidless box of Christmas lights down the staircase; they spill and land in a messy tangle at the bottom. Stomping over them, the lights pop and bust underneath the soles of my tennis shoes. I head back through the house, glancing over at The Nest before reaching the kitchen. When I get outside, I fling open the gate and ram right into Brandon.

  “Whoa!” he says, laughing.

  I storm past him. “I thought I told you to stay on the curb.”

  “You were in there a long time, Jules. I thought something happened.”

  “Nothing happened. Let’s go,” I say, marching towards the bike. I strap on my helmet and plop onto the seat. He stands looking at me.

  “Let’s go,” I snap. “El Jalapeños, right?”

  “Right,” he says, sliding onto the bike.

  When we pull away from the curb, I refuse to look at my house. I refuse to acknowledge that my mother is inside of it floor-sobbing her eyes out. I could hear her all the way down the stairs.

  I don’t care. Whatever. Screw her. She’s a nut and deserves whatever misery she’s feeling right now. And when Brandon and I get to El Jalepenos and he asks why my eyes are red and my nose is runny, I’ll tell him it’s the wind. You should really get a windshield, I’ll say.

  We don’t talk; we don’t speak one word until we’ve ordered our food. I told him it was the wind but he isn’t buying it.

  “Sooo…you going to be okay?” he says, which makes my stomach turn.

  “I’m fine,” I say, ripping open four packs of sugar at once, dumping them into my tea. There’s a TV in the corner over his head; I pretend to look at.

  “Clearly, you’re not,” he says. “It’s like you’re shutting down. What happened back—,”

  “My mom has a lot of problems,” I say, cutting to the chase. “It’s nothing I care to discuss. Can we talk about something else; pretend that everything’s fine?”

  He stares at me a moment longer, clears his throat.

  “Sure,” he says, taking a sip of his root beer.

  I relax a little.

  “But you know you can talk to me, right?” he says, causing me to re-cringe. “I know we haven’t been what you would call friends over the years but—I feel like we are now? My family is messed up, too. I know where you’re coming from.”

  “Your family is not messed up in the way that mine is,” I say.

  “No, I’m sure it’s different. But still, messed up is messed up. My dad is crazy. He has PTSD from Iraq and is a falling-down drunk. My mom moved to Chicago to live with some dick she met on the Internet. She has this whole new family with him.”

  I think about his version of what a messed up family looks like. PTSD and alcoholism sound painful, they do. But still, something feels admirable about it, like it’s a situation rooted in amazing sacrifice. I remember what I heard his dad saying behind the door on that day I picked him up. I earned those medals. So to counter his story with mine? My mom is a filthy hoarder who hasn’t showered in a week. I could barely fit through my house just now. I work at Cedar Point so I can pay for her dolls.

  Not happening. No way.

  But I feel like I owe him something, an explanation of some sort as a measure of good faith because he just shared something very personal with me. I give him a sugarcoated version of my truth.

  “My mom…she has OCD. Obsessions and compulsions that are hard to deal with. She went into my room while I was gone and messed it completely up. She’s not supposed to go in there, but she did and it pissed me off. Her spending habits are ruining my life. I’m sorry it’s ruining our date, too.”

  I sip my tea while swallowing back some tears.

  “Hey,” he says, leaning across the table and catching my eyes in his. “It’s not ruining anything, okay?”

  I clear my throat and nod, then wipe at my eyes and take a deep breath.

  “I’m sorry about your dad,” I add.

  He waves me off, smiling a bit, then relaxes back into his side of the booth.

  “I’m just glad you’re finally calling this what it is,” he says, gesturing around the table.

  “What’s that?” I say, taking a nacho from the basket.

  “A date,” he says, and then reaches over to pour salsa into our shared bowl.

  “We didn’t kiss but he did hold my hand a couple of times,” I say, opening my roommate drawer to pull out my pajamas.

  Dana is standing in the doorway to the bedroom, subjecting me to a friendly post-date interrogation while eating a bowl of Lucky Charms. I take off my jeans and then slide into my sushi-themed bottoms. I’ve decided to focus my debriefing on Adriana. Dana doesn’t know anything about my life back in Lakewood, about my mom. My new friend, her awesome apartment, my drawer…they are a crazy-free zone and I plan to keep it that way. I want to focus on the good parts of the story. Not the parts involving a garbage-covered bed and floor-sobbing mom.

  “I cannot believe she was lying on his bed, under the covers, wearing his clothes,” she says, slurping down the last of her milk. “Talk about desperate. Who does that?”

  I think about it for a second. I rewind my brain to the part of this evening where Ade the Blade was lounging in Brandon’s bed. It feels like it happened five days ago, not five hours, ago. But seriously, who does do that? I picture myself in a situation where I might do something bold like go into a boy’s room when he’s not there, put on his clothing, and then stretch out onto his bed like we’re married or something. Then I picture The Other Girl showing up and me feeling like a presumptuous idiot, fleeing the scene, totally humiliated. Not Adriana, though. That girl has bones of steel and ice in her veins. Best game face ever.

  “Well, anyhow,” I say. “I told him I wanted a do-over. That I’m not making out with someone who has particles from last night’s dalliance all over him.”

  “You actually said the words do-over and dalliance?” she says, her eyebrows rising.

  “Well…he started getting that steamy look in his eye when he dropped me off,” I say, scrunching my shoulders. “He was on the verge of a full-blown lean in. I was getting weak and melty so I had to put the brakes down and remind him that I don’t do someone else’s day-old leftovers. Dalliance just came to me like a gift from the universe; ruined the whole moment. He’s probably at home Googling the word dalliance right now. Then I waltzed up the stairs to your apartment and never looked back.”

  She squeals and stomps her feet.

  Then she stops, gets this stunned look on her face, stares somewhere over my shoulder and says, “Oh my god, you’re seventeen and know how to do this better than I do. I’m in college and still don’t have it down.”

  Then she looks at me directly again. “Can I have lessons?”

  “Ha, ha,” I say. “But if it makes you feel better, I’m eighteen. Well, almost.”

  “Oh, yeahhh,” she says. “It’s your birthday soon. The big one eight. Are you planning anything?”

  “Melody has a spa day scheduled,” I say, pronouncing scheduled like the British do.

  “Ooh, a spa day girlie brunch. Verah fancy,” she says, grabbing one end of the coffee table trunk so we can start setting up my sofa bedroom as per our nightly routine. We have it down pat now: move the trunk, stack the cushions, pull out the mattress.

  “Pbbbllltt,” I say, rolling my eyes, grabbing my end. Then my ph
one goes vibrating across the pink surface of the trunk and we both make a dive for it. She snatches it up and turns away, looking at the screen.

  “He had a terrible time!” she crows, texting and pretending to be me.

  “Oh, my god! Give it, moron,” I say, reaching around her, shocked and laughing.

  She turns around and holds it out for me to read.

  I had a great time Jules.

  Me too Brandon.

  “Ugh, you used his name!” I say, snatching it from her. “You do need lessons. Never use a boy’s name like that.”

  Do it again soon? he writes.

  I keep my reply short and sweet.

  Sounds good. ‘Night! 

  ‘Night. 

  I hold the phone out to Dana. “See, you have to beat back the natural impulse to chase. You have to let the butterfly come to you. Then you can have your freak out in private.”

  We stomp our feet and squeal like idiots.

  “I need to write this stuff down,” she says, grabbing onto the trunk, “Rules by Jules.”

  We finish setting up. We watch Anchorman and eat popcorn, giggling our butts off and voicing the lines we have memorized.

  About halfway through the movie, Dana says, “He reminds me of an older version of Hutch.”

  “Who, Ron Burgundy?” I say, my mouth filled with popcorn.

  “Yeah. Will Ferrell,” she says, “I think Hutch might actually be more obnoxious, though.”

  “Yeahhhh, Hutch sort of does remind me of Will Ferrell,” I say, looking closer at the screen. Now that she’s pointed it out, Hutch totally looks and acts like a younger version of Will Ferrell.

  I look at Dana and she’s in this happy yet weirdly melancholy daze, sprawled out in her bean bag watching Hutch’s celebrity twin as the insufferable Ron Burgundy. I recall some of the movies on her Netflix queue. Talladega Nights, Elf, The Other Guys, Stranger Than Fiction. We’ve watched all of them together. Probably every Will Ferrell movie ever made. She catches me looking down at her.

  “What?” she says.

  “Oh, my god. You like him. You like Hutch!” I say, pointing at her.

  “What?” she says, her face twisting, scoffing, brushing me off, “He’s an ignorant assface. And a man-whore. No.”

  “You filthy liar,” I say, “It’s all over your face.”

  She sits up straighter in her beanbag, indignant, huffing, like she’s trying to think of something to defend herself. When she can’t come up with anything, she throws a fistful of popcorn at me and cracks a smile.

  “You are so busted,” I say, laughing.

  17.

  I am officially a Cedar Point Zombie. It is July 4th and a thousand degrees out. Okay, maybe not a thousand, but it’s ninety-six which is pretty freaking hot. Even the carousel horses are sweating, I swear. A moment of optimism strikes though when Alberta flags me down in front of the elephant ear stand, hands me a pair of plastic gloves, and instructs me to go skim one of the duck ponds over in zone three. For some reason my brain hears “pond” and equates it with “cool” and “swimming.” So not the case.

  Five minutes into the job, my arms are killing me. The skimmer is about ten feet long and it takes all of my strength just to lean over the rails and hang onto the thing. I almost drop it into the pond twice. For an hour, in between being nipped by a flock of offended ducks, I skim ice-cream wrappers, drinking straws and blobs of unidentifiable gunk that have worked their way to the edges. When I’m done, and my pile of disgusting pond-scummy flotsam has been disposed of, I head back over to my zone looking and smelling like boiled garbage.

  I get a drink of water, wash my arms and face in the trailer and then head back out. My forearms sizzle like two slices of bacon while I sweep. No matter how many times I hit the trailer, splash myself down, and get a drink of water, I can’t keep cool. I pass by the coin fountain and gaze at it wistfully. I want to lie down in that fountain and let little kids throw pennies at me.

  I walk over to the Peanuts shop to converse awkwardly again with Dieter. Despite the fact that Brandon and I are seeing each other pretty regularly, meaning we eat lunch together most days, he’s still made no mention of bailing on that IMAX party with Adriana tonight.

  Therefore, in keeping pace, I have kept my plans with Dieter and so need to check in with him. If I truly liked Dieter, then I would put forth some effort into not looking and smelling terrible right now but, truth is, I don’t much care. Obviously, I only asked him to go with me because there’s no way in hell I’m showing up to that party without a big hunk of German arm candy hanging off of me.

  Dieter is backed up with customers but I hang out in the shop anyway. It’s air-conditioned and I need a break because I’m getting woozy from the heat. I shoot him a smile then reach around and grab a bottled water and a baggie of Melody’s homemade fruit leather that I keep stashed behind his counter. Strolling through the aisles, I let my sweat dry while eating and drinking and looking at all of the revolting merchandise that I’ve memorized over the last month. Hand-puppets of the Peanuts gang, a rack of personalized Cedar Point license plates, a metal wall plastered with souvenir magnets, and then, of course, the infinite trove of dolls and figurines. Dolls, dolls, dolls and I don’t even care. I’m so hot and tired that I want to be one of the dolls at this point. I want to be a Charlie Brown Cedar Point Zombie sitting on an air-conditioned shelf staring at nothing.

  When I get to the waterglobe section I check my phone but there’s nothing new. I listen to the voice message that my mom left the morning after our last awful encounter: J-bear, it’s me. I’m so sorry. I’m putting your room back how it was. Please, don’t be mad. And I have two interviews scheduled for Thursday. I’m going to fix this whole mess, I promise.

  That was a week ago. I’ve called her several times since but she’s back to hiding out again. I’m not as upset with her as I was before. I don’t think that I’m upset at all actually. This Zen sort of acceptance rolled over me a couple of nights ago like a grand epiphany. I was lying in bed stressing about money, running down the impossible math of how I might make four thousand dollars before summer’s end, when the answer bobbed across my brain screen like a sunny yellow balloon. I thought: Just go, man, go. Just bring home the bacon, sister, and when you get home at the end of summer, there will be enough. Because what other choice is there? Become a bank robber? A lady of the night? No, I’m going to keep the faith. Like the disciples with the loaves and fishes thing. My Cedar Point loaves and fishes will multiply, they have to.

  And if they don’t, at the end of summer, I’ll tie my mom up, throw her in the shed and hold the most hellacious garage sale that the City of Lakewood has ever seen. There’s a fortune in that house, there has to be. I’ll treat my mom like the developmentally-arrested sad-sack woman-child that she is. I’ll step on her neck, work overtop of her, and mooooove the shit.

  Go, man, go.

  I don’t care that Ginny The Organizer said stripping my mother of control is wrong. The Alabama Fruit-loop doesn’t know what she’s talking about. My mother is weak and sick and needs a little thing called Tough Love.

  And then the same goes for my dad and Melody. The day before school starts, I’m going to just pack my stuff and hit the bricks back to Lakewood. How’s he going to stop me? What can he do? Sit on me? Call the cops? I’ll be eighteen. He can’t do a shitting thing. It’s done. It’s happening. Deal with it, I’ll say.

  But for now, I’m going to try and enjoy my Independence Day. Later on tonight, I’m going to an employee party with a big, handsome German bloke named Dieter. The IMAX movie starts at eleven-thirty after which there will be a barbecue, fireworks, and The Zone War Olympics. Representatives will be plucked from each zone like Hunger Games tributes and will compete in sack races and pie throwing contests. The whole thing lasts until two in the morning and, if I can avoid bumping into Brandon and Adriana all night, I’m going to have a freaking swell time.

  As much as I’m dreading the
rest of my hot, sweaty day, I’ve lingered too long in the gift shop. I quickly tell Dieter that I’ll meet up with him in front of the theater at quarter after eleven tonight. I grab my broom and dustpan and walk back out into the suffocating din of the park. The wind hits me like the gust from a fire-breathing dragon. Within seconds, I’m back to feeling like a dried-up raisin with legs.

  I drink some water from a public fountain and carry on the best I can. Eventually, the heat becomes so oppressive that an empty bench near Married Chocolate Banana Man beckons to me like an oasis. Rest your weary bones, it says, there is even a scrap of shade. I trudge toward it but just as I reach my destination, a group of tweens snatch it out from under me. My next and only choice is to resist the imminent swoon. I drop my sweep gear and squat like a dying turtle right in the middle of the road.

  I try desperately not to topple.

  I try desperately to stay upright.

  Sadly for me, I am unsuccessful.

  It seems that the life goal of Married Chocolate Banana Man is not to hand out frozen chocolate bananas for a living but to be a radiologist. While coming to my rescue, he noticed my medical ID necklace that I keep nestled under my shirt and sent for the park ambulance so, yippee, the cat’s out of the bag. I’m in the first aid station and have come around, eaten some crackers, and drank some juice. The nurse sent for my bag so I have my supplies. My glucose is low but nothing life-threatening. It was more the heat that got to me. Still, they’re sending me home so my big Fourth of July plans with Dieter are canceled. Operation Make Brandon Jealous is kaput.

  But what’s worse, I’m losing four hours of my shift and possibly another day or two of work. That parlays into like a hundred-seventy-five Go-Man-Go bucks. I have to get a doctor’s note explaining that I’m fit for duty. I didn’t put on my application that I have diabetes so now Alberta’s being stinky about the whole thing, wanting verification that I’m healthy enough to work at Cedar Point. Insurance reasons, Dana said.