Read Dolls Behaving Badly for Free Online Page A

understood,
     but at one point she excitedly pushed back her massive braid and screamed out, “Carlita!”
    “Carlita? That sounds so, well, ethnic,” Mother replied, but when Daddy looked it up in the baby book and found out that it
     was the female equivalent to Charles, he couldn’t be swayed. So I ended up a Polish-looking child with a Spanish-sounding
     name in a family with a mother who put on airs and a father who bought me baseball gloves and took me to football games and
     couldn’t seem to remember that I was really a girl. You’d think that when Gene finally came along, three years later, he would
     have given up, but he dragged Gene and me to every sporting event possible, and instead of making us athletic, all it did
     was give us a lifelong aversion to any type of game that required a ball.
    Saturday, Oct. 8
    “Think you’ll ever get married again?” Laurel was splendidly attired in a navy blue Halston blazer and skirt so slim she was
     forced to mince her way across the kitchen. “I’m not getting personal. I just showed a newlywed couple a condo over in Independence
     Park.” She plopped down on a kitchen chair without bothering to brush off the dog hair.
    “So?” I took a savage bite of the peanut butter toast left over from Jay-Jay’s breakfast. I had been up late the night before,
     supposedly finishing a transvestite G.I. Joe doll order but actually working on my Woman Running with a Box painting. The box, now tied with red and yellow ribbon, was cradled against the woman’s chest as lovingly as if it were a
     child. I had no idea what was inside but believed that if I kept painting it would soon be revealed to me.
    “…out of my mind,” Laurel was saying.
    “Huh?”
    “The newlyweds. I can’t stop thinking of them. ‘Are you sure these are the counters you want?’ he kept asking. They were so
     endearing, so careful of each other’s feelings.”
    “Give them a few years and they’ll be fighting over those very counters,” I snorted.
    “Maybe not. If you find the right man it doesn’t have to happen that way.” Laurel’s voice was dreamy, as if she were talking
     from far away. I got up and stuck another piece of bread in the toaster.
    “The question is whether this is a sign or merely a coincidence,” she said.
    I didn’t know how to answer. Laurel has been acting strange, calling and asking off-the-wall questions: If I were a bug, would
     I rather be a beetle or a grasshopper? Were socks invented before shoes? And why do we care what color our car is when we
     can’t see it while we’re driving? These questions make me cringe. They’re like seeing Laurel without her bra, her pale, sad
     breasts forlorn and defenseless without their normal wedge of armor.
    “Some days I put on a yellow sweater yet all day I feel as if I’m wearing black,” she was saying. “Oops, there’s my phone.”
     The theme from Jeopardy! blared as Laurel pulled out her cell and hurriedly tapped out a text message reply. When she looked up, her face was flushed.
    “Where was I? Oh yes: if you had five hundred dollars, would you spend it on a swimsuit that makes you look perfect or a new
     radiator for the car?” She leaned back in her chair and flashed me a hopeful smile; lipstick gleamed against her teeth.
    If I had five hundred dollars, I’d pay off some of my credit cards and buy a new pair of work shoes, but I knew that wasn’t
     what she meant. “I guess it depends on how often I used the car.”
    Laurel’s face fell for a moment. “Okay, it’s your second car, the one you don’t use much. The one you keep for summer.”
    “Summer?” I repeated stupidly. I knew she was trying to tell me something but it was too early in the morning to make the
     kind of mental leaps I needed to understand my sister. I nodded and chose the swimsuit.
    “Yes!” She tapped the tabletop with her hand. “That’s exactly what I thought. So you agree, then? That I’d look good as a redhead?”