What’s my favorite? The carotid.
We tried! We did. But domestic life on Mount Curve Avenue was not for us.
Doll’s Mummy departed this world when Doll was, let’s see, two or three years old. At least it’s believed that Mrs. Early departed this world, in fact her remains have never been found. Doll has said indignantly that she does not believe “allegations” that her Daddy murdered his wife/her mother, dismembered her corpse, and scattered the pieces along forty miles of the Mississippi south of Minneapolis, weighed down with rocks and never to surface, no Doll does not.
Doll says, It was a long-ago time before cable TV and cell phones. I know my Daddy’s heart and he would never harm a hair on anyone’s head who did not deserve it.
When one of Them asked me. Does your father mistreat you, showing me silly naked rubber dolls, I said, No no not I and hummed loudly to myself and rocked from side to side.
I love my Daddy. (It’s true; Ira Early is Doll’s biological father. Not her [step]father as they tell associates and Mr. Xs. Even among Mr. Early’s widespread contacts there exists the principle of drawing the line at certain forms of behavior, and this principle, if you’re in business for yourself, it’s wise to respect.)
(The long-ago time? Some say it was in the early 1970s, and some say it was 1953, but still others argue that Ira Early and his (step)daughter Doll began their travels in 1930, after the crash. Doll is perplexed by this notion — she’s been eleven years old for more than seventy years?)
How old are you, Doll, Mr. X will surely inquire. If Mr. X in room twenty-two of the E-Z Economy Motel is any kin to Mr. X of the other motels scattered along the Mississippi. That question I’ve been hearing all my life, getting so it seriously pisses me off.
Daddy says, Humor ’em. They are a priceless (because inexhaustible) commodity.
Daddy says, Play the script. See, they’d recoil from ten.
They don’t want to hear twelve, either. Still less thirteen. There’s a kind of consensus.
DNT has worked out really well. Or almost.
On Mount Curve we tried. There was even a Grandma with a withered cherry face and Jell-O eyes, Mummy’s mother, Doll tried hard to love but failed. Sniffing in the old woman’s arms holding her breath as long as she could then gagging and pushing free. And Daddy who was a youngish widower bearing his grief stoically one day tugged at his then-dark goatee and said, Margaret Ann you’re my daughter, aren’t you! And nothing of hers. My genes are your destiny, darling. Gravely shaken Daddy was, he’d not realized father-love until that instant.
Still we tried for (how many?) years to lead “normal” — “average” — “approved-оf” — lives. Even went to Mummy’s old church, sometimes.
For all the good it did us.
Always motels or “cabins.” (Yes, there are still “motor cabins” in the rural American Midwest.) Never hotels with lobbies. (Though Mr. Early and Doll sometimes check into Marriots on the expressways, father and daughter traveling under a variety of names and guises.) If Mr. X, Mr. Y, Mr. Z journeys to meet them in Anonymous Metropolis, if he wishes to stay at a good hotel, he will have to take a room at a motel too, like the E-Z Economy. Best for Doll not to appear in any populous brightly lit lobby in her high-heeled white leather stiletto-heel boots, purple suede jacket, plaited pigtailed milkweed-hair bobbing about her exquisite Doll head.
Parentless eleven-year-old with painted eyes, luscious peachy lips, and blusher on her cheeks. Oh, no.
They fled Minneapolis for a good reason. Hounded out, you could say. Persecuted. That terrible day the “public health” inspector arrived uninvited, unexpected, at the house. An officer with the fascist power to “report” Ira Early to the authorities and to threaten him with arrest for Parental Negligence.
Well, possibly there’d been warnings. Registered letters from Margaret Ann’s school addressed to Ira Early, importunate telephone calls from the principal of Mount Curve Elementary he failed to take seriously. Margaret Ann Early, who is enrolled in sixth grade, where is she? Why is she so frequently absent from classes? Why, when she’s in school, docs she fall asleep at her desk? Why are her grades so poor, her deportment so rebellious?
Examined for Signs of Abuse. There were none.
In room twenty-two of the E-Z Economy Motel the man known variously as Mr. X and (as mischievous Doll is shortly to call him) Mr. Radish gazes at himself in a scummy bathroom mirror. Runs his hands through his thinning faded-red hair, observes liquidy despair and mad exulting desire in his otherwise ordinary, mildly bloodshot, eyes. Thinking it isn’t too late, he could call this off. Could just walk out.
He’s a decent guy, really. He’s made mistakes he will never make again. (He believes.)
His groin is throbbing, a pleasurable sensation that fills him with disgust. Do. Not. Touch.
He flushes the toilet to make sure it’s flushed and reenters the other room, smooths the soiled rust-colored corduroy bedspread with both his hands. It’s 11 P.M.; maybe the child won’t be delivered?
It’s 11 P.M., true. But Ira Early can’t be coerced into speeding even by his own wish. In f act, he has an exasperating habit of driving ten miles below the speed limit. In the restored 1953 relic he drives with the fussiness of an elder who disdains contemporary life. It’s part of Mr. Early’s gentlemanly style. It’s part of why you trust him. In his suits with vests, neckties from another era, rimless bifocals riding the bridge of his slightly pudgy nose. His white hair and whiskers give him an appealing Santa Claus look, or maybe it’s that kooky genius Albert Einstein you’re made to think of. Ira Early’s cold shrewd eyes sparkling behind the bifocals like a school teacher’s and that vague smile, lips tight over big chunky carnivore teeth. Bartenders, motel managers, the majority of Mr. Early’s colleagues and associates persist in the error, This old fart is no threat.
After Quay, what?
Looks like — City Center? Exit left.
This Anonymous Metropolis is a maze of ugly streets that should be familiar to Ira Early; he’s been here before, and Doll has been here before, who knows when. You will have noticed that the Inner City is the same city throughout the Midwest. Endlessly repeated Decaying Inner City of a Once-Thriving City. It’s like a suction tube, drawing them in. Like bloody water swirling gaily down a drain just slightly clogged with hairs.
(Why is Doll thinking such a wicked thought? Snaky little pink tongue wetting her crimson lips.)
Exit left, I said, Dad-dy! You’re headed right.
You said left. I mean, you said right.
I said fucking left, Dad-dy.
Just watch that mouth, miss.
And I’m hungry, too, Doll says loudly. Alter this I want some ice cream. Fucking fudge ripple.
I said, miss, watch that mouth.
Watch your own mouth, Dad-dy. You’re the wicked ol’ pre-vert.
(Doll is slipping into a mean mood. The taco burger was mostly cheese. She’s thinking possibly she won’t go for just the carotid; that’s too easy. That was St. Louis. It’s been eight months at least since she did the other; that’s more challenging. And brought back a certain rubbery goody for Dad-dy.)