A Piece Of Normal

by Maddie Dawson

  "Of course," I say. "I promise. Now how are you—"

  "No, really promise."

  "Well, sure... I mean, if it's legal, I'll do whatever. What are you asking me to do anyway?"

  "You'll see. Promise me now."

  "Wait. Do I have to pick up a rattlesnake or go back to Teddy or anything like that?"

  He laughs. "That'd be something, wouldn't it? But you wouldn't go back to Teddy. He's not the right guy for you. I never thought he had enough stuffing to him. Nice guy, but no oomph."

  I sigh. "Yeah, well, he found a little bit of oomph somewhere and got my sister pregnant. And now we're all going to be the outrage of the colony, just you watch. You and Krystal can say goodbye to your days of being the major scandal, let me assure you. Dana and Teddy are taking over for you."

  He shakes his head. "She's a firebrand, that Dana. Always was."

  "Yeah. I thought I had it bad when she was gone and I was worrying about her. Now I see that the reality of having her around is so much worse."

  He snorts a laugh. "Be careful what you wish for, huh?" he says. Then he laughs for real. "So, Krystal and I aren't going to be the latest scandal anymore. Hmm. I'm not sure how I feel about that. After all, how many men my age get to be known as a sex rascal in their own community?"

  "A sex rascal. I like that."

  "You know," he says, lowering his voice. I see his eyes brighten just a tad, and he motions me over closer. "You know, it's true that the colony doesn't like anything more than good sex gossip, but the truth is they've all had some, ah, interesting situations themselves through the years—and not just your ma and Gracie, either, which nobody ever knew for sure was really going on. I could tell you a thing or two that would curl your hair."

  I pull my chair even closer. "Oh, please. I insist."

  He grins, and for a moment his face is transformed to what it used to be. Spreading gossip, I think: a healing pastime.

  "Well, for one thing, Anginetta's grandson recently got busted for dealing drugs out of his father's house in Maryland, and now the Feds have seized Bert's house. That's why he's back living with his mother now. You thought it was just family loyalty, I bet. Heh-heh. But no. No loyalty there. Just a lot of crow to eat. And Anginetta herself: I don't have anything on her, but everybody knew that her husband, the late great Dominic Franzoni, for years frequented prostitutes in the city. There was a rumor going on for a while that he actually had a son by one of them, and had to pay child support until the kid was grown. And let's see—the Artertons. Oh, yeah, Bob Arterton did a little funny stuff with his taxes a few years ago and had to go live in the pokey for a year or so. They told everybody he was traveling on business, but I don't think he did much traveling. Just to the federal penitentiary is all. And so while he was gone, Virginia got back at him by propositioning anyone she could think of, including moi and your dear, sainted father."

  "No! Get out. When did everything start seeming like Jerry Springer's America?"

  He laughs. "It was always this way. And I'm not telling you all the rest. Suffice it to say that the human race isn't as lovely as some would have us believe. Everybody's got a little skeleton dancing around in a closet somewhere. So, believe me, this with Dana and Teddy will blow over in no time. In five years, if they stay together, people will forget it wasn't always that way." He looks at me. "Anyway, I'm not worried about them. What do they matter, frankly? It's you I'm thinking about. You gotta let go, kid."

  "Yeah, yeah."

  His eyes are serious. "No, you do. Think of Gracie sitting there all those years waiting for your mother to get free, and then she never did, bless her heart. Don't let your life get caught up with other people's fates."

  "I'm not," I say, bristling.

  "You're waiting for something," he interrupts. "Just like Gracie was. It might not be something you know just yet, but I see all the signs there with you. You're turning out to be just like her, patiently sitting by while life happens all around you."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "It's later than you think. Time to figure out what you want and go get it. Don't spend time fretting over your sister getting pregnant by Mr. No Oomph. Waste of time."

  I look across the bay at my house, standing in the early afternoon sunlight. Not long ago, I considered myself as having been brought up there in the most normal family in America. I shake my head. "Did you notice what Dana has done with the place? She painted the kitchen walls red."

  "So what?" he says and pretends to swat me. "Do I have to get up out of my wheelchair and smack you? You think the color of the walls matter? God, I oughta smack you. Someone ought to. Get out of there and get going on your life! What's with you people anyway? Wait until you read my social will. God, I wish I wasn't going to be dead when you read it."

  "You could give it to me now," I say.

  He looks like he's considering this, but then he says, "No. No. It's for when I die. Krystal will give it to you. It's all sealed up."

  "But we are talking years and years from now, right?" I say.

  "Yeah. Right. I wish," he says and gives me such a soft-focused, loving look that I get a sinking sensation, as though something has just breathed ice-cold air on the back of my neck.

  31

  By the end of the next week—after my first four days doing the radio show—I realize that I'm accustomed to that icy cold feeling, the sense that the roller coaster I'm on has just plunged two hundred feet straight down.

  I may even be addicted to the exhilaration of answering people's questions on the air. I thought I'd miss the boxes of letters, people's handwritten pleas for help, but this is so much more thrilling. When I'm actually there in front of the microphone, I'm fine—calm, rational, and collected. But as soon as I stop and notice what a daring thing this is to be doing—well, then the adrenaline rush is almost overpowering.

  I hardly recognize my life anymore. For one thing, Alex and I have fallen into a harmless little sex-and-breakfast habit now that we're working together every night. It's wonderful. It started on Tuesday, when he invited me over to analyze the previous evening's show and talk about the callers and how we might attract even more of them—and well, one thing led to another.

  It's adrenaline, I know, that's given me the courage to hurry to his house every morning after I drop Simon off at school. If it weren't for the pounding excitement of sex, I think, followed by the comfort of being held in bed and laughing with Alex, I'd be much more of a hysterical jellified wreck than I already am.

  And yet... and yet... if I'm honest with myself, there are moments even there, in what I call his Alex nest, when I suddenly stand back and wonder what I'm doing. It's so strange: I'll be kissing him or talking to him, and then it's as if a switch has been turned on and I am flooded with uneasiness. This is not my life! Who is this man, really, and is he important to me, or am I just covering up some deep sense of loneliness by sleeping with him?

  On Friday morning, though, I'm not thinking of that. I've aced my first four days of radio shows—twelve hours on the air, answering the questions so nimbly it's as though the answers are being typed into my head as I'm speaking them. I'm already unbuttoning and unzipping as I walk through his living room. By the time I crawl into his bed with him, I am ready for love. This morning I feel so connected to him, not uneasy at all, as we fall together, rolling over and over in the covers. Afterward, we drift into the kitchen and exchange coffee-flavored kisses while the banana pancake batter sizzles in butter.

  Today we can't hang around long after breakfast. He has a staff meeting at the station, and I have a dentist appointment, after which I plan to go to the grocery store. When we kiss good-bye at our cars, he says to me, like he always does, "Remember. If things get crazy at your house, don't hesitate to come back."

  "I won't," I say, and we blow each other kisses. I have no intention of taking him up on this, of course, but it's sweet that he still mentions it. Sometimes when I'm there, he'll show me some quirk
about the house—the precise way you need to hit the refrigerator door with the heel of your hand when the fan gets stuck and starts to screech, for instance—and when I laugh, he says, "Pay attention. This is stuff you may need to know someday."

  The day perks along just fine: I don't have any cavities, and the dentist praises me for my excellent gums. There aren't any lines at the store, so I get out of there in record time, and amazingly, there's hardly any traffic. The weather is perfect. And—hurray!—I've almost made it to the weekend, which I intend to spend reclaiming and scrubbing my house. Doing my Saturday-morning cleaning ritual, clearing out a week of having Dana and Teddy presiding over the evening hours.

  Honestly, having them watch Simon hasn't been as awful as I imagined. Each night, although I've cooked dinner for the four of us, Simon and I have managed to eat together, just us, before they arrive to stay with him. Best of all has been the fact that when I return home in the evening, they're not both hanging around, waiting to talk, pretending that things are just the same as they ever were between us. Usually Teddy has already gone back to his house, and Dana is upstairs, sleeping in the guest room. I haven't had to deal with them as much as I feared.

  If it weren't for the fact that my heart is racing all the time, things would be just about perfect. But, I think as I pull up to the house, maybe this is just the New Me: slightly off-kilter, motor running full blast, but basically okay.

  This must be what change feels like, I think.

  ***

  The first shock comes when I unlock the front door. There's Maggie's voice from the kitchen, along with Dana's laughter. I hear Maggie saying, "You see that? I think it's a stretch mark, isn't it? No, right here. The first stretch mark already. Come on, you can tell me."

  I go into the kitchen, surprised to see them together. They were never good friends; Dana was historically the annoying, and sometimes dangerous, younger sister whom Maggie and I had to take refuge from. But now here they are. When I walk in, Maggie's got her shirt hiked up, and she's pointing to something on her stomach, and Dana is laughing and saying, "I don't think you can officially have a stretch mark when you're not even showing yet. You haven't, you know, stretched."

  Maggie looks up and smiles at me apologetically. "Hi! This is a meeting of the Early Pregnancy Complaint Committee," she says. "We're the Scallop Bay colony chapter."

  "Oh, that's nice," I say and smile back at her. I'm actually happy to see her, even if it is startling to find her here with Dana. "I haven't seen you in so long! How are you doing? Are things good with you and Mark?"

  "Much, much better," she says and starts to say something, but then Dana interrupts.

  "Nope," she says, "this is definitely not a stretch mark." She straightens up from staring at Maggie's belly and looks in my direction without meeting my eyes.

  "Thank you. What the hell is it, do you think? Come look, Lily," Maggie says.

  I come over and look at it. Dana stiffens and moves over a mere inch or two so I can get closer. Maggie is telegraphing me with her eyes: Please don't worry, I'm just trying to help her by being nice, I really love you best. I give her a reassuring look: It's fine.

  "My diagnosis: random red mark," I say. "Nothing bad." I give her a hug. "Wow, Mags, this is so great. You don't have to work today?" I'm about to say we could go get some lunch and catch up, but I see Dana slide her eyes over to Maggie, and Maggie says, "Well, I have a lot of days off coming that I have to take by the end of the year, and then Dana called me, so we decided that we were going to get together and discuss how often we pee and stuff like that." She laughs. "Maybe grab a bite to eat. Do you want to come?"

  "You can come only if you remember how often you peed in your first trimester with Simon," says Dana.

  I hear the annoyance in her voice. "Actually, I'm going to get Simon soon, and I want to hang out with him," I say. Then I remember the rest of the groceries. "Yikes, I have ice cream melting in the car." I go back outside and take my time gathering up the bags, balancing them in my arms so I don't have to make more than one trip. My nice clean teeth, I notice, are gritted.

  When I get back in the kitchen, Maggie is smiling and leaning on one elbow while Dana is telling her how she has to eat something at four o'clock or she goes berserk. Maggie nods and says it's even harder when you work in an office where people don't know you're expecting. Then she and Dana get into the problem of telling people: when and how. Then back to how many times they get up in the night to pee, and how their backs hurt already, so how will they possibly make it the whole nine months?

  I put away the food and every now and then try to contribute something—and perhaps it's my imagination, but every time I try to say something non-pregnancy related, Dana grabs hold of the conversation and hauls it right back. After a few minutes, she says she's starving and why don't they leave to go eat. Also, there's some baby furniture she'd love for Maggie to look at with her downtown.

  "Baby furniture?" I say. "You haven't even had your first OB appointment yet."

  This is the wrong thing to say. Dana's face darkens and she silently goes over and gets her purse and puts on her shoes. "Let's go," she says to Maggie.

  Maggie, ever the diplomat, gets her purse and starts telling me how much she likes my radio show, and Dana has to chime in with how she hasn't once gotten to hear it because she's waaaay too busy with Simon each evening to catch it. "Even when I finally get through all his little rituals and get him to sleep, Teddy and I are just too tired to listen to the radio," she says to Maggie. "It's hard work, being pregnant and watching a child. But—well, I'm up for it."

  There's a silence, during which I wonder if it would be too upsetting if I took this gallon of ice cream and, say, hurled it through the sliding glass door. My pulse is beating in my ears. Then Dana says, "Whoops. Gotta go pee—fourth time just this morning, if you can believe it!" and dashes off.

  Maggie and I look at each other in the whoosh of silence Dana's left behind. I feel something in my pocket, and reach in to find the pink plastic bunny barrette. I hand it to Maggie. "Remember when you used to bring me your barrettes from home when my mother wouldn't buy me any?" I say softly. I know Dana's listening to us from the bathroom, or at least trying to.

  "Wow," Maggie says, turning it over in her hand. "I didn't know they still even made these things."

  "Well, if your baby's a girl, you've got her first barrette," I tell her. "Consider this your first of many baby gifts."

  Without warning, Dana's back, fastening her pants as she hurries in, straining to see what we're talking about. She peers over Maggie's shoulder, still not looking at me. "A barrette! Oh, cool. Wouldn't it be something, Mags, if we both had girls?"

  I wish this didn't make me want to kick the trash can, but after they leave, that's exactly what I do. I kick it as hard as I can, which is very satisfying, even when it falls over and wet, gloppy garbage spills all over the floor. Then, while I'm on my hands and knees picking up eggshells and old lettuce leaves, I give myself a good talking-to. This is nothing new, what's happened here. I, myself, had considered that Maggie and Dana might bond over their pregnancies.

  "Get a grip, will you?" I say to myself out loud.

  ***

  Later, I pick up Simon from school. He comes out of his classroom in a huff and won't talk until we get in the car. I buckle him into the backseat and look at his sad, frowning face in the rearview mirror.

  "Are you okay, pumpkin? What's the matter?"

  "The weather didn't have any clouds."

  "True—it turned nice and sunny all day."

  "You said there would be clouds, and I put clouds on the calendar."

  "Oh, well," I say, pulling out of my parking spot and managing to keep from being rear-ended by a woman who's charging ahead and not watching. I beep my horn at her. "I guess nobody ever really knows what the weather's going to be like until it happens. Welcome to the hard life of a meteorologist. That's what Leon used to do for a living, you know."

&
nbsp; He stares out the window of the car. "Do you have to go to work again tonight?"

  "Yes, but it's Friday. Tomorrow is a home day and so is Sunday, so we can just have fun."

  "But I don't want you to go. You're always gone at night."

  My heart does a little lurch, hearing the edge in his voice. He must be tired after his whole week being a big boy in kindergarten. "I know, sweetie," I say, "but we have this afternoon to have a good time. What would you like to do?"

  In a pouty voice, he says he wants to go to the ice cream place, the one that has a waterwheel and some goats and rabbits. But when we get there, he sees somebody from school—a big scary fourth-grader—and he's too shy to get out of the car. We wait for the kid to leave, but that just doesn't seem to be happening. Finally I have to bring Simon an ice cream cone to the car, and then he gets upset with himself when it drips on the upholstery. To my surprise, he cries when I tell him it doesn't matter.

  "It matters! You know it matters! People can't just drop ice cream everywhere!" he yells. "You can't have sticky old ice cream everywhere! That's what Auntie Dana would do—she never wipes anything up when it spills. She just says it's okay."

  I get out of the car and calmly go get some napkins and come back and start scrubbing the drips of vanilla ice cream. He keeps whimpering and kicking the back of the driver's seat with his sneaker.

  "It's clean now, it's all clean," I say soothingly, but when I go to wipe off his arm, he pulls away and glares at me. "What's the matter?" I say. "Tell me what's the matter."

  He doesn't say anything.

  "Did something happen at school you want to tell me about?"

  Silence.

  "Do you want to get out and go look at the goats? I think the fourth-grader is leaving in a minute. Look, he's throwing away his trash."

  "No, I don't want to look at the goats! And I don't want a baby at our house!" he bursts out.