Sean Jackson Doll Parts
Judy puts her knife on the counter and holds the plate where Cairo could see it: two perfectly even slices of cheesecake. The doily underneath is crinkled, so she smooths it out with a tug. “You’re a diabetic, so why would you eat that much?” Cairo asks. He is twenty, her gay son’s best gay friend. Cairo has been a de facto member of the family since Blake’s botched suicide attempt his freshman year away at college. Cairo teaches yoga to help pay tuition and he has one of those muted Mohawks that Judy finds trashy. He wears eyeliner even though, as she tells it, “Puerto Ricans are born with makeup already on their faces.” He says his goal for the near term is to teach Blake how to understand and practice the Art of Truthfulness. And how to divest himself of the latent family bigotries. “Honesty doesn’t really exist in this family,” Cairo says whenever there is a fight, a spoken brawl usually punctuated with the popping of wine corks. Sometimes Judy lies about the things she does. Eating sugar is typically one of them. She likes to gobble pastries and down lattes until she blacks out and somebody has to dive onto their knees beside her and plunge a needle into her shoulder or thigh. She lies about the obvious link between her own suicidal tendencies and her son’s. She lies about being happy and wanting others to be happy, too. Her eyes flutter but she has a mug (so solid and rough it resembles concrete) nearby with “coke-strong” coffee in it. With one hand she keeps the plate out