She listens to his footsteps on the stairs; then the house falls quiet. Has he gone to the living room? Is he in the recliner? She hears the muted sound of voices from the television.
The medicine cabinet is still open. She straightens out the contents, the minutiae of their lives. Q-Tips, toothpaste, dental floss, an old half-used tube of hemorrhoid ointment, Ben-Gay, tweezers, a hand mirror, a box of Band-Aids. A vial of oil of cloves, nearly empty. Ned’s Tums and his bottle of Pepto-Bismol. Jergens lotion.
Downstairs, the phone rings, a shrill sound that cuts into the air. For a moment, she fears it is Anderson Jeffrey, although in the past he has called only in the morning.
THE FIRST NIGHT OF THE WRITING CLASS — THE ROOM smelled of chalk and dry books, of anxious hope and dusty disappointment, like every childhood classroom she’d ever been in. That first night, he came in looking all neat and newly shaved with the cleanest fingernails she’d ever seen on a man outside of Doc Blessing and Reverend Wills—cause enough for suspicion right there—and before they had time to catch their breaths or decide whether or not they liked him, Mr. Anderson Jeffrey had them writing.
“Make a list of things that are important to you,” he said. “Things you care about.” All around her, Rose heard the scratchings of pens and pencils on paper, as if forty years had vanished in one instant. She felt sweaty. Sick. It had been a mistake to come, but leaving would be worse.
She risked a glance at the other students. Middle-aged women mostly, although there were two older men—both bearded—and one young woman with a layer of makeup you wouldn’t wear at night let alone in broad daylight. Rose couldn’t imagine what any of them were writing down. What was so important to them, and how did they know it so fast, without even taking the time you’d think you’d need to consider something like that? She dropped her hands to her lap, smudged her palms across her skirt. Here she was past fifty, and she might as well be twelve with the scratchy, busy sound of the other students writing still holding the power to paralyze her. She wondered if it was too late to transfer to the quilt-making class.
At least she could be doing something productive. Milk, she printed carefully. Eggs. Coffee. Bisquick. Tums. For Ned. The bottle by the kitchen sink was nearly empty. Tuna fish. Starkist was on sale this week. Margarine. Ajax cleanser. She was almost finished when she heard Anderson Jeffrey say, “Okay. That was the warm-up. Now we’re going to write.” Hot writing, he called it.
“Just choose a word from your list,” he said. “Pick a word that speaks to you and write whatever comes to mind.” As if it were that simple.
“What if nothing comes?” the painted woman asked. He smiled and said, “Put down anything; just keep your pencil moving. Or write, ‘Nothing is coming; I can’t write. Nothing is coming; I can’t write.’ And keep doing it over and over until something comes.”
Rose couldn’t imagine. What kind of teacher was he anyway?
There was a giggle from the back of the room.
Anderson Jeffrey smiled. “Trust the process,” he said.
“How long?” one of the bearded men asked.
“Until you stop,” he said.
Rose stared at her paper. Milk. Eggs. Bisquick. Tuna fish. If she’d dared, she would have left right then. She supposed she could write Nothing is coming for a while and that was easier than the commotion of leaving. She took up her pen and put down the words I can’t write; Nothing is coming, filling nearly half the page.
She was beginning another line when her eyes flashed up to the grocery list and landed on Tuna fish. She copied the words and then, without even planning it, she was writing about the sandwiches her mother used to make for picnics when she was a child, how she’d empty the contents of a can, mash it with a fork, then fold in celery she’d chopped fine, and then salad dressing—always salad dressing instead of mayonnaise so there would be just the right touch of sweetness—all the time humming gaily so that for years after Rose associated tuna fish with happiness and the promise of an outing at the lake.
And then the class was over.
She imagined Ned would be furious when he learned how he poured good money down the drain so she could write a grocery list, a half page filled with I can’t write, and a paragraph about fifty-year-old tuna fish. Of course, as it turned out, he had a lot more to worry about than the money he had wasted on the class.
ROSE PUSHES ALL THOUGHTS OF ANDERSON JEFFREY AND THE writing class from her mind. Perhaps she will go downstairs, act as if this were an ordinary night, as if she has not spent hours locked in the bathroom. Before she can gather herself together, Ned returns.
“Are you going to be making dinner?” The aggrieved tone in his voice has gained ascendancy. He has traveled from concern to exhaustion to anger. She can’t face any of this. He wants too much from her.
When she doesn’t answer, he gives up, goes back downstairs. Kitchen sounds float up, reach her through the locked door. A cupboard door closing. A pan slapped down on the range with more force than required. Sharp noises, each a messenger of Ned’s anger, telegrams of his resentment, his frustration. The sound of the television is louder now. The excited tones of a sports announcer rise up the stairs.
She can’t stay here forever. Eventually, she’ll have to unlock the door, return to life. She raises the window shade and watches the sky turn pink. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. It doesn’t matter to her. Good day or bad. Rain or sun. In the house below, the ball game ends abruptly. She hears the distant sound of water running through the pipes as the toilet flushes in the downstairs bath. He is done trying to reach her. Through the door she hears the sounds of familiar ritual as he readies himself for bed. His footsteps on the stairs. The chink of coins as he takes them from his pockets and sets them on the dresser, the rustling of clothes as he undresses. The sound of a drawer opening as he takes out his pajamas. The click of the switch on the bedside lamp. The long sigh he always gives as he climbs into bed, as if letting out an extra breath he’s held all day. She pictures him slipping between sheets he won’t notice are fresh, being careful to stay on his side of the bed, even though she is not yet there. She can imagine the scent he brings to the bed, a smell that recently has altered. Body chemistry betrays us, she thinks. It reveals every change. Doctors should pay more attention to this.
She remembers smells: the clean milky smell of Todd as an infant, his firm little body perfumed with the intoxicating scent of baby sweat, the occasional acidity of spit-up; then later, when he turned from toddler to boy, the scent had sharpened to a childish sweat, a smell that held the fresh richness of wind and sun, like laundry just taken in from the line. And later still, the teenage years when he’d come home from the practice field wrapped in a serious, manly smell. Vibrant and salty and strong.
And Ned. How she once loved the scent of him. Coccooned in his arms, she would inhale the odor seeping from his pores, drinking it in as if she could never get enough. Lately there has been an acrid smell that reminds her of her father, a sourness that hangs in the air around his skin. Again it brings home to her that Ned is getting older.
She lifts a forearm to her nose, inhales. Her skin smells dry, like something stored in tissue.
SHE OPENS THE DOOR, GOES OUT TO THE HALL, TO TODD ’ S room. She stands for a moment at the threshold.
After the accident, she would come here every night. She believed the strength of her love, her connection to her son, couldn’t be sheared, not even by death. She believed that somehow he would come to her. If you believe enough, it can happen. So she sat in his room waiting, holding on to something of his—a piece of his clothing, a favorite toy, once his toothbrush, another time a sweat-stiffened sock she could not bring herself to throw away or launder.
Now she continues down the hall, past their room. The sound of Ned’s snoring drifts out to her. He has left a night-light on at the top of the stairs, and she uses its faint glow to navigate her way down the steps. In the kitchen, she flips on the overhead light. It takes a
moment for her eyes to adjust to the harsh brightness. Her empty laundry basket sits by the back door, a reminder that the wash is still on the line. Ned has left his dishes in the sink, and she reconstructs his meal from the traces. Toast, a can of Campbell’s Hearty Man Vegetable Beef Soup, a wedge of leftover tart cherry pie.
There is one slice left, and she warms it in the microwave—another appliance she distrusts, all those invisible, powerful waves doing who knows what. She eats standing at the counter, letting the cherry filling sit in her mouth with agreeable sourness. When she is finished, she fills the sink with water, squirts in detergent, submerges her hands to their chore.
After she has rinsed the last plate, she checks the back door. Ned has already locked it. Thirty-five years ago, when they first moved into this house, neither of them locked a door, but Normal has changed a lot in three decades. Now, in addition to the Yale, they have a dead bolt on both their front and back doors.
She listens to the familiar creaking of the house as it settles into sleep. The droning of the refrigerator, the deeper hum of the furnace, the scratching of a rose briar against the kitchen window. They should be cut back, before the deep frost. Another chore for Ned.
“Foolish of us to keep this place,” he told her over dinner last night. “It’s too big for the two of us. Too much upkeep.” They were eating roast pork, and when he said that about the house being too big for them, the piece of meat she was swallowing stuck in her chest. For the rest of the night it stayed there, lodged and burning beneath her breastbone. Finally, sometime after midnight, she had to get out of bed and take two of his Tums.
More and more he has been talking about a time in the near future—three to five years is his plan—when they will sell the house and the station, take the profits, and head south. Buy a place in Florida. He painted the picture for her. No more winter blizzards, or state taxes, or days spent repairing busted transmissions. When he talks this way, Rose’s heart congeals with something close to hatred. Like the time three years ago when they repainted the kitchen and he wanted to brush right over the pencil marks on the framework of the doorway going into the hall, lines demarcating Todd’s growth from toddler to teen. Rose wouldn’t hear of it. These are the visual marks that their son existed, that he stood precisely two feet eight inches at two years and five feet three at twelve. Why would Ned want to forget?
“Let’s make a move while we’re still young enough to enjoy life,” he said through a mouthful of pork, as if Rose could ever again enjoy life. “It makes a lot of sense,” he said.
Not to Rose. Nothing on earth could make her move from this house. Just the thought of someone else moving in makes her physically ill. The first thing the new owners would do is paint over those lines on the kitchen doorjamb, erasing the yardstick of their son’s growth. Doesn’t Ned understand? This house is Todd’s house. If Ned wants to get rid of the station, that is his business, but she isn’t selling the house.
Lord knows, since Todd’s death she has no illusion that she can control one single thing in this universe, but she can’t help but cling to the nearly superstitious belief that if she can just freeze things, keep them the same, she and Ned will escape further harm and she will get a sign from Todd. In spite of all contrary evidence she clings to this last belief.
Lately, in spite of her efforts, things are changing. Her balance is precarious, as if deep inside she is undergoing a tectonic plate shift, like the one she heard about on a Nova show Ned watched. When the narrator explained that imperceptible and subtle movements occur within the earth’s crust and that these alterations precede earthquakes, she felt a jolt of recognition. Since the accident this feeling has been growing, and she has especially felt it this fall, as if her interior world were oscillating in minute and dangerous movements. Danger hangs invisible in the air. Threatening.
She turns out the kitchen light and heads up the hall stairs, guided by the faint glow of the night-light Ned has left on for her. The world outside is silent save for the distant barking of the McDonalds’ collie.
She undresses in the dark, slides into bed, careful not to disturb Ned. He is a good man. Honest and hard working. She is lucky to have him. She repeats these words like a prayer.
He moans slightly in his sleep. She wonders if he is sick—those worrisome headaches—and she feels the unpleasant sting of guilt for turning him away earlier. What if he has a tumor? An aneurysm? Could she stand to lose him too? Could she stand to lose another member?
After Todd died, Reverend Wills gave them a book written for couples who experienced the loss of a child. “A lost member,” the author wrote. Like a leg lopped off, Rose thought as she read the words. Or an arm. The book said that the death of a child could bring a couple closer or drive them apart, that couples either turned to each other for comfort, tried to make sense out of the tragedy and discover spiritual support, or they divorced, the assault of a child’s death too much for their marriage to withstand.
Neither has happened to her and Ned. They just float, suspended in time, waiting for a life raft to find them.
CHAPTER 7
OPAL
DURING HER FIRST TWO MONTHS IN NORMAL, OPAL had prepared herself for a call from Billy, but the weeks have passed without so much as a single word except for the messages he relays through her mama, messages Opal knows enough not to trust. Melva can carry on all she wants about Billy missing her and Zack, but if he misses them all so goddamned much, why doesn’t he at least call? At first this lack of communication irritated Opal, but now she is reassured by it. It reinforces her belief that Billy is relieved to have them out of his life, that he won’t make any fuss.
When he finally does call she is so totally unprepared that his voice sends a jolt straight to her stomach.
“HI, BILLY,” SHE MANAGES— COOL AS YOU PLEASE—AND thinks, Shit. She slides down to the floor, her back against the cupboard, and cradles the phone base in her lap, unconsciously taking the same pose she held every night the fall of her junior year when, night after night, she would slouch down on the living room carpet and hold the phone tight against her ear. For hours, they would talk in whispers, tones varyingly cottony or tender, silky or hushed, as they progressed through the stages: attraction to flirtation, first date to dating, steady dating to phone sex. Phone sex led to the real thing—sex on the bench seat of his black Ram or behind one of the gravestones at the back of the Baptist cemetery, anywhere they could be alone for five minutes. Who would believe that what began with hot whispers and the thrilling tenor of one boy’s voice could lead to such trouble, that it would end in tears of disbelief and crisis—unimaginable crisis?
“Shit, I miss you, Opal.” He has lowered his voice. First time they’ve talked since she left New Zion, and he’s acting like they spoke last week. He is so out of touch with reality. “How’s Zack?” he is saying.
As if he anything like cares. “Well, he’s just fine.” She lets her eyes roam around the kitchen and finally fix on the small yellow-and-blue spot stuck straight in the middle of a cupboard door.
The sticker—peeled from a banana—was there when she moved in, a remnant left by the Montgomerys. It was so startlingly out of place in the sterile, avocado kitchen that Opal had immediately taken it as a sign. Stuck like that in the middle of the cupboard, what else can it be? She has not yet figured out the meaning. Chiquita. Wasn’t there a singer from South America with that name? Or is she confusing her with the character in the banana ads?
“Opal? You still there?”
She pulls her attention from the decal. “I’m here.”
“I miss you, Opal.”
She pauses, knowing the prescribed response, the answer Billy waits for: I miss you, too. The wire hums with her silence.
“How’re you doing? You okay?” he asks, as if Melva hasn’t been feeding him regular reports.
“I’m great,” she says in a baton twirler’s chirp. “Just great.”
“Yeah, well that’s wonderful,” he says
in a voice suddenly gone flat.
“I’ve rented a house,” she says, “two stories, three bedrooms, a backyard. It’s on a dead-end street which is good—safe for Zack—and there’s a nice older couple next door.” She knows she is babbling but can’t stop. “I’ve enrolled Zack in preschool and there’s a toy store here that is interested in the dolls.”
Instantly she regrets mentioning her work. Although it is the first thing she was ever good at—really and surprisingly good at—Billy hates that she makes dolls, though what it is about them that makes him so mad is beyond her.
“Well, I’m glad to hear everything’s so terrific with you, Opal, because—not that you asked—but me, I’m not doing so great.”
Crap. Not five minutes have passed in the first conversation they’ve had since she left New Zion and already it’s heading straight downhill. It was mentioning the dolls. She stares at the yellow sticker, and just like that the singer’s name comes to her. Not Chiquita. Carmen. Carmen Miranda. But that doesn’t help her figure out the meaning of the sticker.
“That story you fed me,” Billy says, “about going to visit a relative?”
Reluctantly she drags her attention back to the call. “Yes.”
“Well, damn it all, Opal. You lied.”
Whatever. “Lied?”
“About visiting a relative.”
Ancient history, Opal thinks.
“Your daddy told me you don’t even have relatives in Ohio,” he says in an injured tone, as if this is the important part of her lie.
“I know,” she says. Sometimes he can be so thick she has to wonder if someone has to zip his fly for him.
“Well, shit, Opal. I believed you.”
“I’m sorry,” she says. A bone tossed from the safe distance of six states.
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