Our New Normal

by Colleen Faulkner

  “She’s conscious, all right. Won’t stop yapping. Yap, yap, yap,” he repeats. Also for my mother’s benefit.

  I cut my eyes at Oscar. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, trying to figure out what’s going on. “Mom fell off a ladder. Changing a lightbulb,” I tell him.

  “What’s she doing on a ladder?” Oscar asks.

  I step into the jeans, and say into the phone, “I’m on my way. Put Mom on the phone.”

  There’s a pause. I hear my mother’s and father’s voices, though I can’t make out what they’re saying. Jeans zipped and buttoned, I put the phone on speaker and set it on the dresser.

  “I can go,” Oscar offers.

  I close my eyes for a moment, pulling my T-shirt off over my head, flashing my bare breasts at my husband.

  “Come on, Liv. Let me do this,” he says.

  “You went last time.”

  “Last two times,” is his comeback, trying to make a joke, but only halfheartedly. “I don’t mind. I might get her seen faster.”

  I put on my bra. I can still hear them talking. “Mom? Dad?” I lean over my phone, speaking into it. “Hello?”

  From the depths of my bag, I come up with a three-quarter-sleeve white T-shirt. As I pull it on, my phone goes silent. “Mom? Dad?” I look at Oscar. “They hung up.”

  “I’ll go, Liv. You should stay here with the kids. With Hazel.”

  “No, you should be here. You’re better with her anyway.” I redial. They’re number four on my speed dial. Oscar is first, then Sean, then Hazel, then my parents.

  The call goes through.

  “Your father hung up on you.” It’s my mother.

  “I didn’t hang up!” my father shouts. “Dropped the swiving phone.”

  “Are you okay?” I ask Mom. I want to ask her why she was on a ladder changing a lightbulb. At nine thirty at night. A part of me wants to ask why she had to do it this weekend when I was away. It’s only a forty-minute drive from here to their house, but it’s the principle of the thing. Couldn’t they have behaved themselves just for the weekend? Just so I could get away and stay away.

  Then I feel guilty. My mother hurt herself and I’m worried about my own inconvenience. I press the heel of my hand into my forehead. What’s happening to me? Why am I becoming such a bitch?

  “Mom,” I say in a gentler tone.

  “I’m fine. I don’t need to go to the hospital. You don’t need to come home.”

  I slide on my flip-flops, debating whether or not I should take the time to put on a little makeup or risk frightening the ED doc. “Dad says you were bleeding pretty heavily.”

  “I’m fine. I called your sister. She says I’m fine.”

  I stand there, hoping maybe I just got dressed for no reason. I ought to know by now to get the whole story before I leap into action. A couple of weeks ago my father called me from his cell phone to tell me that my mother had left him in the car while she had gone into the grocery store in “one of those battery wheel things” and that she’d never come back out. I tried her cell, got no answer, and then I drove to our local Hannaford. Neither Mom, Dad, nor their twelve-year-old Honda was there. I found them at home. Mom was doing a puzzle. Dad was watching his bird feeder from the window. Turns out they had been to the grocery store, but according to my mother, she’d been inside only long enough to get rye bread and the orange sherbet that was on sale. She had no idea what my father was talking about and she didn’t even know he knew where his cell phone was and that he must have called from the backyard because they’d been back from the grocery store since before lunch.

  “Beth came over and had a look? Good,” I say with a sigh, stepping back out of my flip-flops.

  “No.”

  “No?” I step back into them.

  “No,” my mother repeats. “She said I didn’t need to go to the hospital, not if it stopped bleeding. Well . . . it has for the most part. Dribbling a little. I told your father I needed a paper towel and he tore one in four quarters and gave one small piece to me. You know how he doesn’t like to waste anything.”

  I cut my eyes at Oscar. He’s standing by the bathroom door. “I’ll come have a look, Mom,” I say into the phone.

  “There’s really no need.”

  “I’m going to bed,” my father shouts. “Good night, Beth!”

  “He doesn’t really think you’re Beth,” my mother says gently into the phone. “He’s just being difficult for difficulty’s sake.”

  “It’s okay,” I murmur, knowing she’s covering for him. “Why don’t you sit down, watch something on TV, and I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”

  “Fine. I’ll work on my puzzle. Can’t watch TV. Your father disconnected it again, trying to unplug the lamp. He thinks my mother’s lamp is running up the electric bill.”

  She hangs up and I just stand there, holding the phone. My parents have been in the same house for forty-five years. I can’t imagine them living anywhere else. And yet, I’m not sure how much longer they can stay there. Not alone.

  “Come on, hon. Let me go,” Oscar says, walking toward me. “Let me do this for you.”

  “It’s fine.” I shake my head.

  Oscar stops. Stands there in his baggy underwear. “We can’t ask her to abort her baby,” he says.

  It takes me a second to switch gears. Crises. “I didn’t suggest that. I never said that,” I answer quietly, my heart aching for Hazel. For Oscar. For us. For the child that will be of my body, one step removed.

  He reaches for my hand and catches my fingers. “We could do this,” he whispers, choking up.

  “We’ll talk about it later. I have to go.” I turn away, pulling my hand from his. “I’ll text you when I get there and see what’s going on.”

  “You can’t just call your sister and get her to go over for you?” he calls after me.

  I throw him a look over my shoulder.

  “Liv, I think you need to be here with Hazel tomorrow. With us.”

  “I’ll be back,” I tell him, opening our bedroom door.

  For a second I think he’s going to follow me. Half hope he does.

  He doesn’t.

  * * *

  “Take these.” I hand my mother two over-the-counter pain relievers and sit down on the edge of her bed. I pass her the glass of water and watch her drink.

  “All this fuss.”

  “Three stitches,” I point out, taking the glass from her when she’s done. I set it on her nightstand beside the Amish romance paperback she’s reading. She’s obsessed with them; I’d never known such a thing existed until a few months ago when she started getting them automatically delivered to the house. She says they’re her escape.

  “I didn’t need to go to the hospital. Could have used Steri-Strips.” She fusses with the hair over one ear; she went with the sensible New England haircut when I was in middle school. “Your father will have kittens when he sees this bill. He thinks the electric bill is high?” She snorts. “Wait until he sees this one.”

  I smile. My mother and I have always had an interesting relationship. I love her, and I know she loves me, but we’ve often been at odds. Growing up, she was so pragmatic. Too pragmatic. She could plan a birthday party and get me to every soccer or softball practice, but she never had time to talk to me about my childhood and then teenage woes. She was never interested in listening to what I had to say. Dad was always my buddy, my partner in crime, the one who would listen to me boohoo over the B I got in spelling, the girlfriend who didn’t invite me to her birthday party, or the guy who asked someone else to the prom that I was sure he was going to ask me to. I think my rapport with my mother is better now, though. I admire her so much, the way she’s dealt with my father’s declining health. Her own. Her grace in growing older. I’m beginning to see her in a different light.

  She was diagnosed with degenerative joint disease almost ten years ago. A year ago, she started using a wheelchair on her “bad days.” Now her bad days come more often. But
her mind is fine, better than fine. She could beat me at Trivial Pursuit any day of the week. And she deals with my father if not with patience, then with aplomb.

  “Your father in bed?” asks Mom, lying back on her pillow. They stopped sleeping in the same room years ago. My father snores and my mother likes to stay up late reading. He says the light from the iPad screen bothers him. She says his foghorn bothers her.

  “He’s sound asleep.” I glance at her digital clock beside her bed. It’s 2:10. I debate whether I sleep here on the couch, drive back to the cottage, or just go home. We only live ten minutes away. I know I should go back to be at the cottage when Hazel wakes up, but a part of me wants just to go home and hide under my duvet. Let Oscar handle it. Oscar who wants to be a father again and make up for all of his mistakes.

  It’s as if he thinks he can get a redo. He thinks he can make up for all the holidays he missed when he was on call and couldn’t get home. And it wasn’t just Christmas and birthdays he missed, or the gift buying for his son and daughter. He missed school plays, and soccer games, and parent-teacher conferences. He missed Sean’s first tooth and the first time Hazel rode her bike without training wheels. He missed reading Curious George books over and over again and making snowmen in our front yard. He missed the events and I think now he misses the memories.

  But can a parent really have a redo? Even with another child? He’ll still never have the relationship with Hazel and Sean that I do.

  I close my eyes for a moment. That’s unfair. And unkind. But probably mostly true. I open my eyes. “Soooo”—I draw out the vowel—“no sign of Beth?”

  “What’s wrong, Liv?”

  “You called her, and she didn’t want to come?”

  “She was on a date.” My mother lowers her voice as if there’s someone else in the room to overhear us. “A nice banker. Or stockbroker.” She waves her hand as if she can make him either one with her invisible magic wand.

  “She couldn’t come check on her eighty-one-year-old mother who fell off a ladder because she had a date? Was she in another state?”

  My mother exhales. While she’s usually able to be patient with my dad, the same rules don’t apply to me. Her expectations of me have always been high, and I feel as if I’ve always fallen short. “Tell me what’s wrong. I can see it in your face.” She lies there and waits, her hands folded neatly. Such beautiful hands once, before arthritis gnarled them. My mother was always so beautiful, the kind of beauty that makes a young, awkward daughter feel ugly in her presence.

  I rise from the bed and walk away. There are baby pictures of me and of Beth wearing the same froufrou pink dress, hanging on the wall flanking my dad’s old maple dresser. Beth is giggling in her photo, chubby hands raised. My face is solemn, my hands on my lap. Beth always teases me when she sees the images. She calls it my baby resting bitch face.

  “Olivia?” Mom drawls out my name.

  I exhale, debating. I wasn’t going to tell her tonight. I’m not even sure I have the right to tell her at all. Shouldn’t Hazel be the one? If she’s old enough to have sex, isn’t she old enough to tell her grandmother that she had unprotected sex, which is going to make her a great-grandmother?

  I wrap my arms around my waist, hugging myself. Wishing I had hugged Oscar before I left the house. We used to kiss each other hello and good-bye. We still do sometimes, but I wish I had kissed him good-bye tonight. I wish I had told him I loved him.

  I turn around. “Hazel’s pregnant.” I’m surprised by the emotion that rises in my throat, practically choking me.

  My mother gasps.

  “She told us today. I think she should consider adoption.” I shake my head, beginning to pace. “But she’s dead set against it.”

  “She wants an abortion?” my mother asks.

  I shake my head and again emotion bubbles up, this time threatening to strangle my words. “She . . . she wants to keep the baby. She and Tyler.”

  “Well.” My mother crosses her arms. Settled back in a pile of pillows, she looks almost like a queen in her white robe and nightgown. Images of the elderly Queen Victoria come to mind. “I can’t imagine he’d have enough energy to get up in the middle of the night to tend to a little one.”

  “Exactly my point.” I walk toward the bed, excited by the thought of having someone on my side. “Oscar is opposed to the idea, but, Mom, I think we need to consider . . .” I rephrase. “I think Hazel and Tyler need to think about putting the baby up for adoption. She’s just going into the eleventh grade. She can’t take care of a baby.”

  My mother frowns. “She can’t put her baby up for adoption. You’ll just have to raise it. You and Oscar.”

  My heart sinks. Et tu, Brute?

  “Mom.” All I can manage is a sigh. I feel like I’m going to burst into tears, collapse on the floor, scream my head off. I feel like I’m on the edge of a great precipice and if I stumble off the edge, I don’t know that I can find my way back up the cliff. I’m tired and I’m worried about my parents and I’m half paralyzed with fear for my sweet, beautiful daughter. What will her life be now? She and Tyler are going to marry and raise a baby? The idea of her marrying Tyler is almost more frightening than the idea of her being a mother.

  “It’s the way we used to do it, you know,” my mother goes on, unaware of how close I am to the abyss. “My aunt Lulu on my dad’s side had a baby out of wedlock, and her parents just took the baby in and she became Lulu’s youngest sister. Lulu ended up marrying a nice plumber or electrician or something.” She does the wave thing again.

  I press the heel of my hand to my forehead. I can feel a killer headache coming on. I wish I’d stopped for a cup of coffee somewhere on the way home from the hospital. The only coffee my parents have here is caffeine-free instant.

  I wish I’d let Oscar come instead of me. He would have had enough sense not to bring up the pregnancy with my mother.

  I wish I’d followed up on my sex talks with Hazel. I suspected she and Tyler were having sex. But I’ve been so focused on getting my business off the ground that I didn’t do my job as a mother. I didn’t protect her. I didn’t protect my cub.

  Tears fill my eyes and I turn away so Mom can’t see them.

  “I’m surprised you’d even consider adoption,” she continues. “After all the trouble we had with you.”

  I find her choice of words interesting. My little sister, Beth, my parents’ biological daughter, a “surprise” baby, was ousted from nursery school for biting. She failed the fourth grade. She was expelled from two high schools, and as an adult has flitted from job to job, man to man, financial crisis to financial crisis. And good old Bernice and Ed have bailed her out. Every . . . single. . . time.

  I wasn’t trouble. I was just a little girl who was confused about why her birth mother would give her away.

  “What does Oscar say?”

  I sniff and turn back to her. “He thinks Hazel can do it. Raise the baby. And if not . . .” I exhale, too tired to even think about it now. “He thinks we should keep the baby,” I say softly.

  Mom slides down in her bed and closes her eyes. “You married well, Liv. He’s a good man.”

  “He is,” I whisper.

  A silence hangs between us.

  “You staying overnight?” she eventually asks, eyes remaining closed. “Clean sheets on the bed in the spare room.”

  “I think I’ll go back to the cottage. So I can be there when Hazel gets up.” I cross the room to her bed and lean down and kiss her cheek. It’s leathery, yet still soft. “Good night. I’ll call you in the morning.”

  “Good night.”

  I turn off her bedside lamp and walk toward the light in the hallway. Closing the door behind me, I go down the hall to Dad’s room. He’s easy to find: I just go in the direction of the snoring.

  He’s fallen asleep with the light on, his iPad on his chest. Asleep, he looks like his old self: the aquiline nose, broad forehead, cleft chin. He has a five o’clock shadow and his white ha
ir is shaggy. He needs a cut. He used to go to a barbershop down the street, but he caused a ruckus a couple of times over whose turn it was that Mom told him they closed. So far, he hasn’t noticed when he walks by that the place is, indeed, still open for business. I cut his hair now.

  I gently lift his hand and pull his tablet out from beneath it. It comes on when I touch the screen. He’s playing Candy Crush. Sean loaded it on his iPad for him, thinking it might be good for his brain. I’m surprised how much Dad likes it. It was sweet of Sean, smart of him to think of it.

  I close the cover and set it beside the bed. Then I just stand there for a moment, sad. Sad that a man of such great intellect is now struggling to follow the rules of Candy Crush. Sad for what he’s lost, for what I’ve lost, too. What we’ve all lost.

  My parents were always partners. They adored each other. While my mother never worked outside the home, she didn’t just cook and clean for Dad and my sister and me. Over the years, she worked on some amazing volunteer projects at the hospital, the library, the schools. She had friends, she lunched, she took free courses at the local community college. And she adored my father. As a kid, I remember her waiting on a call from him saying he was on the way home from his office, and no matter what we were doing, she’d run into the bathroom and check her makeup and tidy her hair. She always greeted him at the door with a smile on her face and often a cocktail in her hand for him. My dad loves a cocktail. And he was as happy to see her at the door as she was to see him. They always fell right into conversation, enthralled with each other even after years of marriage.

  I sometimes wonder why they adopted me. I know they did it because Mom couldn’t have children, or so she was told, but I wonder why they felt the need. Was it just because it was expected of them? Because I always felt as if I was a little bit of an intrusion in their lives, a third wheel. They didn’t need me to fulfill their marriage. They always had each other.

  Sometimes I’m jealous now of that relationship they had then. I don’t know that Oscar and I ever had it. We certainly don’t now.

  I set Dad’s iPad on the nightstand and lean down to kiss his cheeks. He opens his mouth and exhales in a loud snore. It makes me smile. “Good night,” I whisper, turning out his light.