A Piece Of Normal

by Maddie Dawson

  "How nice for you," I say coldly.

  She looks at me for another long moment—I can feel her eyes on the side of my head—and then she sighs heavily and says, "Look, it was for the best. What's wrong with you, anyway?" Then, after a moment more, she says, "Well, good-bye," and slams the bedroom door before she goes downstairs.

  24

  That evening, Leon takes another fall. Krystal calls me from the hospital to say it's a more serious stroke this time, and she doesn't know how long they're keeping him. Since their ambulance ride, she says, he's been coming in and out of consciousness—so could I possibly go to her house, get her some shoes and a sweater and her toothbrush, and then come to the hospital? She left in a T-shirt dress and flip-flops, and it's cold there and she can tell they'll be there overnight. She can't bear to leave Leon; she's going to sleep in the armchair by his bed.

  I say, "Of course." Leon and I have had each other's house keys for years. I look over at Simon, who's sitting on the floor watching me with his big brown eyes. I can't really take him with me to the hospital; he wouldn't be allowed in, and besides that, it's almost his bedtime.

  "Where's Daddy and Auntie Dana tonight?" he asks me.

  "I don't really know," I say. I'm aware that Simon and I had been halfway expecting Dana to come along all evening. We've been playing "trucks in danger"—a game he tells me she plays much better than I do. This is hard news for me: I'm not even the queen of my kid's games anymore.

  "Why aren't I best at it?" I asked him. This is crazy: I know Simon loves me best, but still my heart twists with an old, familiar jealousy.

  "Well," he said, and licked his lips nervously, just the way he had the other day when I asked him why Dana and Teddy were smiling in the picture he drew. I see that I'm making him worried about hurting my feelings. "She'll run around the whole house on her knees, but you only go a little ways," he said.

  I pretended to chase him down and give him noogies. "Hey, you don't have to tell me twice," I said to him. "I'll run on my knees through the whole house if that's what it takes." I'd been clobbering my kneecaps on the hard wood floor, when, thank goodness, Simon goes upstairs to get his dinosaur.

  I get up and call Teddy's house. He answers after about ten rings.

  "Wow," I say. "I was just about to hang up. Do you know where Dana is?"

  There's kind of a muffled noise, and then he says, "Yeah, she's here. What's up?"

  I feel a little stab of fury. "What's up is that Leon's had another stroke, and I've got to take Krystal some things at the hospital. What's up over there?"

  Another muffled sound, and then he says, "We'll come and keep Simon, if that's what you're asking. Just give us about ten minutes to wrap things up here."

  "Oh, absolutely, take your time," I say. "It's not like a stroke is life or death or anything."

  "Lily," he says. "You bringing Krystal things to the hospital isn't the life-or-death part. Leon's condition is the life-or-death part, and he's already being taken care of there. Am I right?"

  "What exactly is going on, if I may ask?" I say, and I hate my tone of voice; in fact, I hate everything about this conversation.

  "Aromatherapy," he says. "She had an upsetting afternoon."

  ***

  Krystal and I sit together in the visitors' room off the intensive care unit, and she cries and I hold her. To cheer her up, I tell her stories of what Leon was like when I was a kid—how funny and brave he was, how he taught me to play the ukulele after my parents died because, he said, ukulele music is just about the most comforting, twangy kind of music there is, and it was all he figured he could teach me right then since I wasn't all that musically talented, he said. She and I eat the brownies I've brought in with me; store-bought ones, but who cares? We can barely chew and swallow anyway.

  We sit there then in silence, and I think how it's a cruel joke the way they put fluorescent lights in these rooms where people are already despairing. Everybody in here looks green and saggy, as if the lights have sucked all the color out of our skin. There's an older couple across from us, leaning together and talking in low voices. Their daughter is gravely ill.

  I've just started to say, "There should be dim lamps or candlelight, in here," when I look up and am amazed to see Gracie come in. I feel a flutter of gratitude to see her, before I remember that we seem to be unofficially avoiding each other. That day after our talk in the garden, I marched in the house and never—I realize guiltily—called her again. Whenever I thought of her, I decided that I was too busy with Dana and Simon and my hair, my job, my decision about my job, visiting Leon—all of it. But now she's here, and when she comes over and hugs Krystal and me, I realize just how much I have missed her, and I want to burst into tears.

  When Krystal goes in to visit with Leon for her allotted twenty minutes, Gracie and I go down to the cafeteria for coffee. We talk about Leon's condition for a while, and then she reaches over and touches my hair. "Nice. I take it this wasn't from a kit."

  "No. Professional help. Actually, Alex's sister did it. Remember I pointed out Alex to you at our lovely dinner party?" I hate to bring up the dinner party, but she doesn't seem to mind.

  She takes a long sip of her coffee, loaded with cream and sugar, and says, "Ah, yes. I do remember there was a guy there you had your eye on. So, you're seeing him now?"

  "Well, no," I say, and fill her in on the important points, minus my throwing myself at him, of course. I do tell her, though, about the possible job at the radio station and how thrilling and terrifying it was to try to do my column aloud instead of writing it. And then, when she's still watching my face as though she's waiting for more, I find myself telling her the startling fact that he offered to let me come and live at his house should things get difficult at my house. I expect her to be surprised, but instead she looks at me and says, "Ohhhh, you mean the Dana and Teddy thing?"

  My mouth goes dry. "Yeah," I say, and my voice sounds far away.

  She reaches across the orange Formica table and squeezes my hand. I wait for her to say something about how ridiculous it is to think of there really, in fact, being a "Dana and Teddy thing."

  "It's hard, I'd imagine, but you look like you're holding up well," she says.

  For a little while we chat about how awful it is that the colony people seem to have turned on Leon after so many years of their all being friends. Then I say, as lightly as I can, "Would you... you know... just tell me what you know about the Dana and Teddy thing?"

  "Well," she says, looking a little concerned. "I don't think I know anything that everybody else doesn't know. Just that, you know, they're together all the time. I've seen them holding hands and kissing down by the beach sometimes. It doesn't seem like it's much of a secret." Then she sees my face and says, "Oh, Lily. You didn't know this? Oh, come here, my poor baby." She gets up and comes around to my side of the table and pulls me to her in a hug. "Shit. Why am I always the one telling you stuff you don't want to know? Huh? Don't tell me you're going to start avoiding me again."

  The next day, Maggie and I have our usual Monday-afternoon lunch at Claire's. I am not exactly in the mood for lunch, I tell her on the phone, what with Leon being so sick and now this new thing with Dana and Teddy. When I got home from the hospital last night, Teddy was there alone, reading in the living room, while Simon slept upstairs. I had sort of thought we might talk about what was going on, but it was clear he was in no mood to talk. He got up quickly when I came in and said he had to get back. He wouldn't meet my eyes. So... fine. I'm not going to be the one to do all the heavy lifting, I tell Maggie on the phone. If there's something he wants to tell me, then he has to start the conversation. I'm not going to make it easy for him.

  Maggie says, "Well, you have to have lunch with me. And promise me that when you're walking to Claire's, you'll notice how many babies you see on the way."

  "What?"

  "Count babies, okay?" Her voice is shrill and excited. "Promise!"

  I see four babies on the
way to Claire's, and I tell her this when I get next to her in line. She says, "Whew! I saw three babies, so together we saw an odd number. Good. I think that's very good. And seven is a good number anyway. Very lucky."

  "And... who are you again?"

  She laughs. "Today I am officially one day late, and so even though it's crazy, I'm looking for signs." She takes both my hands and shakes them with hers and squeezes her eyes shut. "Ooh, Lily, what if it really worked? What if I'm pregnant? Can you believe it?"

  "Why don't we just get a pregnancy test and find out?" I say. "Don't they work when you're like five minutes late these days?"

  She takes a breath so deep she practically has to go up on tiptoe. I stare at her. I've never seen her this way, not in all the eons we've been friends. Then she says, "Uh, I can't."

  "Why not?"

  "Scared."

  "Ohhh, Mags. You're scared to know?"

  "Yeah. So I'm looking for signs in the outside world. I made up some tests. If there's an odd number of babies out, then that's yes. If someone says—"

  "No," I say to her. "No. We are not going to play games like that. Come on. We're going to the drugstore. You need to know for sure."

  "I don't want to know!" she says, but she lets herself be dragged out. I steer her down the street, both of us laughing. She's still craning her neck for babies she can count, and I keep shaking my head and telling her I never knew she was this insane. When we get to the pharmacy, all the tests are locked up behind the counter, and there are four different kinds to choose from and no way of judging the different brands, and the lines are long, and on and on and on. Maggie's anxiety is contagious. She's fidgeting and twisting her hands around and around, and I have to ask her three times to please try to get a grip—she's making me absolutely frantic. She laughs at me. My hands are clammy, and I feel as though I'm on pins and needles. There are so many reasons this test has to be negative, and yet looking at her just breaks my heart, how bad she wants this.

  I pay for the thing because she's incapable of counting out bills just now, and then we run back to Claire's, running just the way we would have done twenty-five years ago, tearing home from the store or across the beach to visit each other. Wow, I think, squeezing her hand, whatever the outcome, this is such a moment in our friendship. This, I'd like to tell Dana, is what you earn when you stay in one place, when you get to know someone as well as Maggie and I know each other. Her fear and excitement right now are my own.

  Then, wouldn't you know it, there's a line for the ladies' room at Claire's. It's all I can do to keep from pushing these women aside and explaining to them why we have to go first. By now Maggie is so nervous her face is drained of all color. I remind her to keep breathing, and we stand there, holding hands, breathing deeply, counting breaths, until finally, finally it's her turn.

  And then, after about nine years have passed in normal human time—after I've paced and looked out the window and eavesdropped on people's conversations and paced some more and outlined for myself all the comforting things I'll tell her when it turns out not to be positive—she comes out holding the little stick in her hand, her face all shiny with tears, and she says, "Look at this. Is this a line? It's a line, isn't it? Oh my God, it's a line!"

  25

  Dana's cooking a hamburger when I get home. She's barefoot and wearing a halter dress, and the whole kitchen seems like one big about-to-be grease fire, with the oil popping everywhere. She's singing along to "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane: "One pill makes you larger / And one pill makes you small..." Her former theme song.

  I go in and put my bag down on the island and look at her with a sigh.

  "Hi," she says. "What's that look mean?"

  "Nothing. You should turn down the heat on that burner."

  "I know how to cook a hamburger. This is the way I like to cook them: they get black on the outside and they're still raw on the inside."

  "We can barely breathe in here for all the grease. The whole kitchen is going to have to be hosed down. And also, that's not a safe way to cook beef. It has to be cooked all the way through."

  She sighs and turns down the heat, but the look on her face is that of someone appealing to a silent audience who will understand how oppressed she is. "How's work?"

  "Fine." I look through the mail. "Maggie's pregnant."

  "Oh! That's good, isn't it?"

  "I guess. Yeah. Good news."

  "What does old Marky Mark say about it?"

  "I think she plans to tell him along about the time she needs to go to the delivery room. That's the latest plan, at least."

  "Well. I'm sure he won't notice before then." She's busy scooping her burger onto a bun and then slathering it with globs of mayonnaise.

  "So, if I may ask, why did you sleep at Teddy's last night?"

  She looks at me and flushes just ever so slightly. "Uh. . . because I believe he's a friend of mine?" she says.

  I look at her steadily. "I would really like to know what's going on."

  "Nothing," she says. "He helps me. And I slept there because..." she says very slowly, as if she's as curious as anyone to see what the end of the sentence will bring. "... Because I, ah... I was in no mood to come back here and get a big lecture from you about Randy. The lecture I feel I'm about to get right now, for instance."

  "Oh," I say. "I'm supposed to just stand by quietly while you run a scam on somebody. Not say anything."

  She rolls her eyes. "I didn't run a scam. That. Is. My. Truck. Mine. Dana Brown's. My truck. How many times do I have to tell you that?"

  "You told him Simon has leukemia and that's why you need the truck. I call that a scam. It makes me ill."

  "Well, it's just too bad you had to come bursting in on us about three hours earlier than you usually come home. I apologize that I didn't have my little tasteless, offensive discussion with him all wrapped up. I thought I had until the end of the business day."

  "You know what? You'll say or do anything to get what you need. And the other thing, while we're at it: it's bad enough that you persist in leading Teddy on when I told you how vulnerable he is—even the colony people are starting to remark on it—but then, if that's not bad enough, I come in and find out that you've slept with Randy!"

  "Old times' sake," she says and regards me coolly. "It's kind of a given that people are going to do that sort of thing, not that you would know." Then her eyes flash. "You know, when I was a kid this might have been an appropriate conversation. But I am an adult, and I can do whatever I fucking please. And that includes leading Teddy on, as you call it. He and I are both consenting adults, and this is insulting—"

  "He's my ex-husband," I say.

  She leans against the counter, eating a bite of her hamburger. Juices ooze down her arm. "You know what, sweetie cakes? He's not your anything. He's his own person. And I'm my own person, and if we want to hang out, who cares? Really. What's the big hairy deal? You think he might get hurt? He might not be able to stand his ground against the big bad Dana? Oooooh, poor Teddy!" She does a mock shiver.

  I glare at her. "How is it that you and I always come back to this dysfunctional relationship we have? Why can't you go out and make your own life and leave mine alone? There are lots of other men in this world; why do you need to pick on the one I happened to have been married to? Is it to show me how easy it is for you? Is that it?"

  "Maybe it has nothing to do with you at all," she says, and throws her half-eaten hamburger in the trash can. "Did you ever think of that?"

  ***

  Krystal calls me the next day and tells me they've figured out a way to fix Leon: they've put a shunt in him so he can get more oxygen to his brain. At least, I think that's what she says. The good news is that he's home by the end of the week, and to make up for the colony women who will do nothing for him, I get to work making roasted chicken, escarole and beans, a spinach casserole, and blueberry pie, and take it all over to him. He sits on his deck, a blanket on his legs even though it's about nin
ety degrees, and he looks out at the Sound and explains the different cloud formations to Simon and me. Leon has been educating me about weather my whole life with the secret hope, I've always thought, that I would one day realize that meteorology is my true calling. Now, I think, he's decided he might have more luck with Simon. Simon, at least, is actually looking where Leon is pointing.

  I feel happy just to be able to sit here with him again, I tell him. I don't say that it occurred to me, watching him there in the ICU, coming in and out of consciousness with his face turned the color of clay, that he really might die. That this could be it. It sounds odd, but Leon's death has always seemed something so far in the future that I didn't have to think about it—like Gracie's. They've both always been so lively and opinionated and important that I didn't really ever stop to notice how old they were getting or to consider how short the future might be. When my parents died, it was shocking and unexpected and devastating; but with Leon, I now realize that I am watching his slow demise, his fade-out.

  He still looks a little bit gray, and his arms have bruises from the needles. Still, his eyes are as bright as they ever were. And we're here, sitting together in the late-afternoon sunshine, and maybe we have lots of time together. Or... well, maybe this is all we'll ever get.

  Simon goes inside to play with the trucks he brought, and I lean over and say, "Leon, I have to ask you something. Do you think my father was unhappy because of my mother and Gracie?"

  "What about them?" he says.

  "Come on, Leon, I know the whole story now. You don't have to pretend with me."

  He sighs and looks at me straight on and coughs a little. "Listen, your father was the finest man in the world. Anybody could be his friend, your father." He coughs again. I watch a vein near his temple tremble with each cough, and then I get up and get him a glass of water from the kitchen. When he recovers he says, "He was quiet, but he had a lot of love for your mother and you girls."