Prettiest Doll (16 page)

“Not exactly—”

“Because I have yet to hear an apology. And I would like to hear one.”

I had never seen him angry at me before.

“Do you have any idea what last night was like? The worry? Wondering if you'd been hit by a bus? Kidnapped? If you were dead? Do you have any idea?”

“Okay, okay. I'm sorry.”

“Olivia.”
He got up and sat next to me on the bed, scooching up close and taking my hands. “This is so unlike you, scaring people. What is the
matter?
”

I jerked my hand away. “Nothing. And I said I was sorry. What more do you want?”

“I want to know what's going on.”

“Why does something have to be going on? Why can't this just be me being a normal girl?”

“Do you think normal girls run away from home without telling their mothers where they are? Or their uncles?”

“How would I know? How would I know what normal girls do?”

He leaned back, away from me. “Oh-h-h-h,” he breathed, as if the whole thing were dawning on him.

“What?” I said, irritated that he thought I was so easy to figure out. Just one more box to be put in. “Look, this isn't about pageants.”

“Well, what, then?”

“Not everything in my life is about pageants!”

“Okay. Okay,” he said soothingly, but it was too late: I was already crying. Sobbing, holding my face in my hands. “Shhh. It's all right, Jammie,” he said, rubbing my back.

“Quit doing that,” I said, arching away from his hand. “And don't call me Jammie.”

He took his hand away and sat quietly while I cried. I couldn't stop, even though I knew crying made me look ugly. But I didn't care. I couldn't stop thinking about the dresses. The evening gowns and the costumes, the organza and the tulle, the bows and lace. So many dresses. When I got a new one, I couldn't wait to wear it. Stiff and sparkly, it crinkled with the magic of possibility. I couldn't wait. And then, after I wore it, it was just a dress. Mama would sell some of them on eBay to help pay for another one. Gone. Now it seemed like such a waste.

Maybe I wanted to look ugly right now.

I hiccupped and wiped my nose on my sleeve. Uncle Bread reached for a box of Kleenex on the bedside table and held it out to me. After I blew my nose, he said, “Your mom will understand, Olivia.”

“Understand what?”

“About the pageants. That you don't want to do them anymore. She might pitch a fit, but she'll come around.”

“I know that.” His being on my side was getting on my nerves. “That's not why I'm crying.”

“Why, then?”

“It's just...” I sighed, exhausted. Crying is hard work.

“I know your mother. She doesn't like being thwarted. She can be scary. But I'll help, if you want. We'll tell her together. Don't you worry about it,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulders and pulling me close. “I'll stand by you.”

“Oh, really? Is that what you'll do?”

He let me go.

“You're not going to stand by me. That's a lie,” I said. “Maybe what you meant was that you'll
send me a letter
.”

He didn't answer. He crossed one leg over the other and watched it bounce up and down.

“That's what you meant, isn't it? And you'll write all kinds of good things. You'll say how you love me and you're proud of me and how everything will work out! ” I was yelling now. “And how busy you are with all your kids at school! How
amazing
they are!”

“Liv. I'm sorry.”

“Sorry for what? You don't have anything to be sorry about.” The more I yelled, the more my insides burned.

“Just ... sorry. I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm sorry for everything.”

“You know what I remember? How Valentine Biswell got run over by a Subaru Forester.”

Uncle Bread sighed.

“I got three whole letters about that. How someone else's mama accidentally backed over her foot in front of the Augustus Hodge School and carried Valentine into the front office even though she wasn't crying or screaming or anything because she was so
brave.
And how she had to stay home for a week because her daddy didn't have enough money for pain pills, and how you bought her Children's Tylenol with your own money, and visited her every day after school and brought handmade cards from all the other kids so she would know how much they all missed her.”

“I wanted you to know what my life was like. You were important to me. I wanted—”

“Why did you leave?”

Everything in my body was on fire, the sobs in my throat like flames.

I cried until I couldn't cry anymore. When it was over, I had no bones, nothing to hold me up. He put his hand on my back; my skin hurt. Everything was sore and tender.

“It was complicated,” he said. “It was too much for a four-year-old to understand.”

“I wanted to be Valentine Biswell, all bent up with pain, hobbling around on crutches, not being a very good reader anyway, and now being even worse with all the school I'd missed. I didn't care about any of that,” I said. “I just wanted to be her.”

“I'm sorry,” he said again.

“I hated Valentine Biswell. For years. I had the meanest thoughts. That she must have been retarded, being a slow reader. That she wasn't brave for not screaming—she just liked all the attention, everyone fussing. And that her daddy ... Well. How at least she
had
a daddy.” I paused. “I liked to pretend that she was ugly, really ugly, the kind of ugly where kids whispered nasty things and teachers were hateful to her because they knew the other kids didn't like her and they were trying to win them over.” When he looked at me funny, I added, “Teachers do that, you know.”

“I know,” he said.

I reached for another tissue and blew my nose hard. Then I asked, “Was she?”

“Was she what?”

“Ugly.”

He ran one hand over his scalp.

“It was a long time ago, Liv. Seven or eight years.” He met my eyes and said, “I think she was a perfectly nice-looking girl. A nice, average-looking girl.”

I felt better. If you're ugly, people feel sorry for you. In a way, it's worse to be average looking than to be ugly.

“So explain it to me now. Why you left,” I said.

“It's still complicated.”

“Was it because you're gay?”

Uncle Bread look shocked for a moment. Then he burst out laughing.

“I'm not gay,” he said. “Where'd you get that idea? Oh, wait, don't tell me. Janie?”

“Well, yes.” I was embarrassed to be so wrong. Then, when the embarrassment wore off, I was shocked. For the second time in one day, I thought, remembering Dan's daddy being crazy and mean one minute, sad and rejected the next. Sometimes I went for weeks not even being surprised.

Uncle Bread laughed again, but sadly. “Your mama is a piece of work,” he said. “Talking shit about someone she doesn't know at all. Making up stories.”

“She said you were gay and you had to leave Luthers Bridge because there were no other gay people for you to hang out with. And that, if you'd wanted to, you could have taken a class or something and learned how to like girls.”

“When did she say all this? When you were
four
?”

“No. I don't remember exactly. She used to mention it every once in a while. I think she wanted me to stop missing you so much and she thought ... maybe...”

“That if you thought I was gay you wouldn't love me anymore?”

I nodded yes. Then I said, “It didn't work, though.”

“Thank you for that, sweet Liv.” He turned my shoulders so I would face him. “Gay people are just gay. They're born that way. It isn't anything to be ashamed of.”

“Okay.” I pretty much knew that anyway.

“They can't take a class, and why should they? There's glory in being who God meant you to be. And as for me, well, I've been hearing things like this my whole life. If you're a skinny boy who doesn't like sports and likes to read, you hear it all the damn time. You get awful tired, after a while.” He shook his head. “So I left because I wanted to live somewhere crowded with people. So that, even if there were still a lot of people who were like your mother, there'd be a few who weren't. Who'd get me. Who'd see who I really was. That answer your question?”

“Yes,” I said. “It does.”

I felt everything slowing down, the way it does after you've yelled. Or when something that seemed crazy finally starts to make sense.

After a minute, I said, “Dan says some kids talk baby talk to him. He says he doesn't mind, that he's gotten used to it.”

“I bet that's just what he says.”

“Maybe.”

“You don't really get used to it. You
cope.
You
adjust.
But after a while...” He paused. “You get pretty sick of the whole damn thing.”

I thought about Mama being fat. There are no shots for that.

“What happened to Valentine Biswell?” I asked.

“Last I heard, she was struggling in high school. Running with a rough crowd.”

He looked sad.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“Yeah.” He sighed. “You do what you can, you know? And when it isn't enough, you feel terrible. Terrible.” We sat for a moment, in the soft, buttery lamplight, Uncle Bread looking as though he'd lost a race, me thinking that, as it turned out, I was glad not to be Valentine Biswell.

Finally, I said, “I'm sorry for the rest of it, too.”

He reached for my hand. “You know what you've got to do now?”

He meant call Mama. “I know.”

“And Dan. I can't let him stay here. And I can't just turn him loose, to roam the streets. That's not a way to live.”

“I know.”

“There are good social workers out there, people who can help him.”

“Let me talk to him first. Please.”

He leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. “Your daddy—”

“Don't say anything about him being proud of me.” He wouldn't have been proud of the way I'd run away, how I'd put Mama through holy hell.

“I was going to say he was a good talker, too.”

 

I walked into the living room, and Dan knew immediately. “You're going back,” he said.

“I have to.” I sat next to him on the soft suede love seat. “Don't be mad.”

“I'm not.”

“You look mad.”

“Quit picking at me.” He turned away, toward the fireplace. “This is just how I look.”

I put my hand on his back. “What are you going to do?”

He was silent for so long that I thought maybe he hadn't heard me. But finally he said, “I have an aunt in Denver. She'd let me live with her, I bet.” He paused. “There'd be snow,” he said.

I laid my head against his back and put my arms around him. “Please don't do that,” I whispered. “Please go home.”

We just sat, not talking. I wondered how long it would be before I felt like putting my arms around a boy again.

“She'll make me get the shots,” he said.

“Tell her this is how God made you.”

“It won't matter,” he said miserably. “She won't pay any attention.”

It made me think of the Boston Tea Party, the Massachusetts colonists standing their ground, disguising themselves as Indians, boarding ships in the cold autumn night. The harbor water stained brown with tea. Coercive acts.

“Just because you live with her doesn't mean she can tell you what to do,” I said.

He half-turned to face me.

“If I did get the shots, what would you think?” he asked.

I let him go, studied his face. I could see there that it mattered to him, really mattered, what I thought.

“That you wanted to make her happy,” I said. “And maybe that you wanted to be happy, too.”

He hugged me hard. I could feel him shaking. I couldn't tell if it was from crying or relief. Maybe I was shaking a little, too.

I called Mama. “Don't cry,” I said over and over again, but she couldn't stop, even when I said I was fine, I was with Uncle Bread, everything was okay. “I'm coming home,” I said, and she blubbered, “I'll say you are,” but she didn't sound mad at all, just weak and relieved.

When I got off the phone, my own tears welled up. I had known she would be afraid, but it was one thing to know it and another thing to hear it in her voice and in her sobs that just kept coming.

We stayed one more day in Chicago. Uncle Bread took a sick day to show us around. His girlfriend, Heidi, came along. She didn't have to take a sick day because she was a writer and could do whatever she wanted and work at night.

“What do you write?” I asked.

“Vampire novels for fun, obituaries for money,” she said. She was pale, with dark, curly hair pinned up in back except for two perfect tendrils spilling down around her face. Her eyebrows could have used a little tweezing. She wore ripped boyfriend jeans and a black turtleneck under a black velvet blazer, bright red mittens, and a pink paisley scarf at her neck. She wasn't pretty the way I was used to, but I couldn't stop sneaking looks at her as we rode the elevator down to the street.

We had waffles at Sam & George's, then rode the El downtown to the Willis Tower. “It'll always be the Sears Tower in my book,” Uncle Bread said. Then he added, just to me, “That's what it used to be called.”

“You old fuddy-duddy,” Heidi said, nudging him with her hip, then curling into his side for a hug.

He put his arm around her shoulders. “Damn right,” he said. “If it were up to me, Badfinger would still be called the Iveys.”

“What is Badfinger?” I asked.

“A band,” Uncle Bread said, and then he and Heidi laughed at how it was weird that they knew such an obscure fact. And I felt happy that they had each other.