Dolls Behaving Badly Read Free Page B

good.
     What had I done? Why had I left such a prince of a man?
    “He chewed with his mouth open,” Laurel reminded me. “He hung dead animal heads on the walls. And remember your wedding? He
     wore hiking boots with his tux.”
    “Those are no reasons to leave a good man,” I cried.
    Laurel snorted in disgust. “What exactly about him do you miss?”
    “He loved to eat,” I said. “He was a great hiking partner. He had a nice furry chest.”
    “So get a dog,” Laurel snapped.
    Enter Killer Bee. Like everything else around here, she isn’t much to look at. Part beagle and part Labrador retriever, her
     eyes are slightly crossed, her tail bent, her coat speckled with outlandish white spots, the largest one in the perfect shape
     of Florida, right down to the panhandle. Killer is afraid of loud noises, cats, small dogs, kites, the garbage truck, and
     plastic bags blowing in the wind. She also has a nervous stomach and throws up if anyone yells too long, too loud, or too
     often.
    But Killer is loyal to a fault, patrolling the hallway at night, her toenails clicking on the floor like a demented sentry.
    We rescued Killer Bee from the back of a pickup truck at the supermarket. Jay-Jay took one look at the squirming puppies and
     refused to budge.
    “Can we get one, huh, Mom, huh?” He asked for so little, how could I possibly refuse? I gave the man a twenty and we drove
     home with that puppy licking Jay-Jay’s face. He named her the next day, after watching an advertisement for a movie about
     killer bees swarming a Texas town.
    I have to admit that through all the housebreaking, the chewed-up shoes and coats, and the torn upholstery, it helped having
     another body in the house. Nights after Jay-Jay is asleep and I pace the dark living room, it’s reassuring to know that anytime
     I want, I can reach my hand out and she’ll trot over and greet me. She’ll always be happy to see me.
      
    Jay-Jay wasn’t happy to see me when I picked him up from his after-school program this afternoon.
    “You smell,” he hissed, glaring at my grease-splattered uniform. “The other mothers don’t wear stupid aprons.”
    Well, what could I say? The other mothers had neat hair and I’m-a-respected-member-of-the-community clothes and wedding rings
     that flashed when they waved their hands. Jay-Jay attends the gifted program in a school located in an upper-middle-class
     neighborhood, and while he’s too young to understand the significance of class structure, he’s smart enough to decipher the
     nuances. He knows it’s not good to have a mother who works as a waitress and has rightly decided that this must be my fault.
     Once we got in the car, though, he was more civil, and by the time we hit the first traffic light, he was explaining a science
     class fiasco.
    “Julia was supposed to only count the green colors,” he said. “But she didn’t, Mom. She counted everything but green.” Jay-Jay shook his head. “We came in last . It took us forever. We had to recount every single green.”
    I had no idea what he was talking about but I nodded my head. I was looking forward to a long bath and a bowl of tomato soup
     with little oyster crackers floating around the top, like Gramma used to make. She called the crackers “little darling dumplings,”
     and thought they were the cleverest thing.
    “Crackers that float,” she marveled, and none of us had the heart to tell her that all crackers float, to one degree or another.
     I was remembering Gramma’s tomato soup recipe when I pulled in the driveway and met up with the sight of my bearded ex-husband
     sprawled over the porch, his face hidden behind a hunting magazine. A bear growled out from the cover.
    “Jay-Jay Jiggers,” he yelled, standing up and brushing off his pants. “Wanna head over for dinner? Got a nice piece of salmon
     and I’ll fry them little brown potatoes you like so much.”
    “Can I, Mom, huh?
    I hadn’t planned anything for supper but even