The Sleeping Doll

third sandwich.
    “So, that was my ex,” she continued. “I never see him or hear from him. Thank God.”
    She’d just given him the details of the husband—an accountant and businessman and a wimpy little guy, believe it or not—who’d put her in the hospital twice with internal injuries, once with a broken arm. He screamed at her when she forgot to iron the sheets, when she didn’t get pregnant after only one month of trying, when the Lakers lost. He told her that her tits were like a boy’s, which is why he couldn’t get it up. He told her in front of his friends that she’d “look okay” if she got her nose fixed.
    A petty man, Pell thought, one controlled by everything except himself.
    Then he heard the further installments of the soap opera: the boyfriends after the divorce. They seemed like him, bad boys. But Pell Lite, he thought. One was a petty thief who lived in Laguna, between L.A. and San Diego. He worked low-stakes scams. One sold drugs. One was a biker. One was just a shit.
    Pell had been through his share of therapy. Most of it was pointless but sometimes a shrink came up with some good insights, which Pell filed away (not for his own mental health, of course, but because they were such helpful weapons to use against people).
    So why did Jennie go for bad boys? Obvious to Pell. They were like her mother; subconsciously she kept flinging herself at them in hopes they’d change their ways and love, not ignore or use, her.
    This was helpful for Pell to know but he could have told her: By the way,lovely, don’t bother. We don’t change. We never, ever change. Write that down and keep it close to your heart.
    Of course, though, he kept these wise words to himself.
    She stopped eating. “Honey?”
    “Um?”
    “Can I ask you a question?”
    “Sure, lovely.”
    “You never said anything about those, you know, girls you were living with. When they arrested you. The Family.”
    “Guess I didn’t.”
    “Did you stay in touch with them or anything? What were their names?”
    He recited, “Samantha, Rebecca and Linda. Jimmy too, the one who tried to kill me.”
    Her eyes flicked toward him. “Would you rather I didn’t ask about them?”
    “No, it’s okay. You can ask me anything.”
    Never tell someone not to talk about a subject. Keep a smile on your face and suck out every bit of information you can. Even if it hurts.
    “Did they turn you in, the women?”
    “Not exactly. They didn’t even know we were going to the Croytons’, Jimmy and me. But they didn’t back me up after I got arrested. Linda, she burnt some evidence and lied to the police. But even her, she finally caved and helped them.” A sour laugh. “And look at what I did for them. I gave them a home. Their own parents didn’t give a shit about them. I gave them a family.”
    “Are you upset? I don’t want to upset you.”
    “No.” Pell smiled. “It’s okay, lovely.”
    “Do you think about them much?”
    Ah, so that’s it. Pell had worked hard all his life to spot the subtext beneath people’s comments. He now realized that Jennie was jealous. It was a petty emotion, one that was easy to put down, but it was also a central force in the universe.
    “Nope. I haven’t heard from them for years. I wrote for a while. Linda was the only one who answered. But then she said her lawyer told her it’d look bad for her parole and she stopped. Felt bad about that, I have to say.”
    “I’m sorry, honey.”
    “For all I know, they’re dead, or maybe married and happy. I was mad atfirst but then I understood that I made a mistake with them. I picked wrong. Not like you. You’re good for me; they weren’t.”
    She lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed his knuckles one at a time.
    Pell was studying the map again. He loved maps. When you were lost, you were helpless, out of control. He remembered how maps—well, the lack of a map—played a role in the history of this area of California, where they sat right now, in fact, Monterey Bay. In the Family, years ago, Linda had read aloud after dinner, all of them sitting in a circle. Pell had often picked works by local authors and books that were set here, and he remembered one, a history of Monterey. The bay had been discovered by the Spanish in the early 1600s. The Bahia de Monte Rey, named after a rich patron of the expedition, was considered a real plum—fertile land, a perfect port, strategic location—and the governor wanted to build a major colony there.