Pretending Normal

by Mary Campisi

  Pretending Normal, formerly Lies Imitating Life, was a past quarter finalist in Ray Bradbury’s New Century New Writer Award contest. It was also a past semi-finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest.

  1976 Before-Sara Polokovich wants out of Norwood, Pennsylvania, population 4,582, where the undertaker and the butcher are the same person. All she has to do is earn a scholarship. Just two more years… but until then, she pours over classics to strengthen her comprehension skills, reviews for the SAT, and continues to request college brochures from every school in the northeast.

  Sara’s just buried her mother, her father drinks too much, and her kid sister won’t leave her alone. Why can’t her life be normal? Even half-normal? Why does Frank, (she refuses to think of him as her father anymore), spend all of his time in the garage with that damn ‘57 Chevy? And why does he have to hide bottles all over the house; in the red metal cupboard in the garage, behind the faded orange curtain in the kitchen, under the sink in the bathroom? Why can’t anybody talk about what’s happening?

  As Sara struggles to free herself from a life of dysfunction and disease, she will learn the true depths of a parent’s love and the ultimate sacrifice given— and taken— in the name of that love. Pretending Normal follows Sara Polokovich’s coming of age as she discovers the truths about family with all of its flaws and weaknesses as the bond that holds one to another, in love, loyalty, even death.

  Pretending Normal

  by

  Mary Campisi

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  About the Author

  Other Books by Mary Campisi:

  Dedication:

  To those who survived life with an alcoholic parent.

  Almost two months have passed since I left and came to live here. I only went back to the old house once, to pack up some clothes and a few books. Aunt Irene said not to worry about bringing a lot of things with me. We’d buy what I needed, kind of like taking on a new identity. I know she wants to give me a fresh start, but I can’t erase fifteen years with a new bedspread and a different address.

  My old life is somewhere deep inside. A closet full of new clothes and a different zip code won’t make it go away. Some days I have to look in the mirror, touch my face, speak in my voice, to see that at least I’m in the same body; at least I haven’t disappeared altogether.

  Chapter 1

  Summer 1976

  We buried my mother fifty-seven days ago in St. Augustine’s Cemetery. There’s no tombstone yet, but Father Torrence said she’ll have one before winter. I don’t care because I’m not going back. Why would I? To talk to a rectangle of grass covering a box stuffed with decaying body parts?

  She’s not there anyway. Helen Lenore Polokovich is in our backyard breathing life through her roses—the prizes she loved as much as Kay and me. That’s where I go to talk to her because I can see her, and I can hear her. I can.

  It was supposed to be a simple surgery, routine, she called it. Many women my age have hysterectomies, she said. Why wouldn’t we believe her? After all, she was a nurse. But she didn’t say anything about a myocardial infarction. I burned the word in my brain the second Dr. Borchard said it.

  And now, it’s just me, and Kay, and him.

  I’m sitting on my bed with a Sears and Roebuck catalog, planning my escape from this great metropolis of Norwood, Pennsylvania, population 4,582. Two more years. If I break it into very small chunks, I might get through it.

  If I move to Hawaii, I won’t need a winter coat. Or snow boots. I will need a swimsuit though, lots of them. Bikinis. I flip through the Sears and Roebuck swimsuit section, find one in navy and white trim, another in hot pink, a third in black. In three months, when the new catalog comes out, its thin pages smooth and unwrinkled, I can pick all over again.

  If I move to Hawaii, the only thing I’ll ever have to shovel is sand, white stuff, lots of it, sifting between my toes, sticking to my Coppertone calves. I can sit on the beach and drink from a coconut, watch the sun fall into the ocean every night. That’s what the brochure says, doesn’t it? I yank open the top drawer of the nightstand, grab the pamphlet Aunt Irene gave me last spring and flip to page five. ‘Enjoy the beautiful stillness of a Hawaiian night, sipping exotic refreshments from a coconut as you watch the glorious ball of sun drift into the ocean.’ Close enough.

  But I’ll be happy in Florida, too, in a big, white house with orange trees in the backyard. Every morning I’ll pluck the oranges from their limbs and squeeze sweet juice into my glass. I might even think about Georgia—peaches and the Atlanta Braves. Maybe even North Carolina.

  I push the brochures aside, scoot down on my pillow and heave a long sigh. Hawaii. Florida. Georgia. North Carolina. Who am I kidding? I’ll settle for any place where the butcher and the undertaker aren’t the same person. Any place but Norwood. If you don’t get out, you get stuck working at the Beechmont Paper Mill or the A&P. Or, if you are lucky enough to escape to college and stupid enough to come back, you’ll get hired by Norwood General Hospital as a nurse, respiratory therapist, or lab technician.

  Not me, though. Two more years and I’m gone. Then I can order a Big Mac every night if I want to, or a Whopper—with fries, and a chocolate shake. Maybe I’ll pick a college based on the number of McDonalds and Burger Kings in the area, since Norwood has none. I laugh out loud. Mom would have had a fit. He would just call me a goddamn imbecile.

  Who cares? He’s the goddamn imbecile, he’s the one who thinks he’s such a hot shot because he’s head foreman at the mill. He’s been there for thirty-three years; he should be president of the place by now. So what if he’s in charge of one hundred and three employees? So what if he knows how to operate every piece of machinery, knows all the supplier’s products, has his name on the door of a pathetic cubicle he calls an office? So what?

  So what?

  Chapter 2

  Nina Tegretti has been my best friend since second grade, when her father, Leo, moved his family from Buffalo to Norwood. Nina lives two streets over with her parents and two brothers in a dark green house that used to be a grocery store. She has an older sister named Maria who dropped out of Allenwood Community College and moved to Philadelphia five months ago after a huge blow-up with her father over curfew. Nina lets me read the letters Maria sends on flowery stationery that smells like baby powder.

  It’s Saturday afternoon and Nina’s supposed to be confessing her sins to Father Torrence, like she does every third Saturday of the month. But, today she’s skipping because as she says, ‘How many times can you say you lost your temper with your little brother?’

  We’ve just come out of Benny’s Hot Dog Deluxe, where we’ve stuffed ourselves with Benny Deluxes, a basket of onion rings, and cherry phosphates.

  “Well, at least now I’ve got something real to confess,” Nina says as we work our way toward the alley that leads from Main Street to St. Augustine’s Church.

  “I guess you do.” She means because she lied to her mot
her about going to confession. I haven’t been to confession since the pig roast when he made me lie for him. I’ve got a friend, Charlotte Lorenshine, who thinks spilling your guts to an adult, especially a priest, is just plain freaky. Of course, I don’t tell her about the Catholic teenage code and how we all just recycle the same sins. There’s the basic trinity; I disobeyed, I argued, I lost. Then all you do is insert and expand. I disobeyed my mother and/or father/grandmother/grandfather, other person of authority. I argued with my mother and/or father/sister/brother. I lost my temper with my father/mother/sister/brother.

  The only person I know who confesses to ‘impure’ thoughts is Conchetta Louise Andolotti, but what do you expect from someone who wears a rosary around her neck and has five statues of the Virgin Mary in her front yard? Now that’s freaky. I only know about the impure thoughts because I saw the Confirmation letter she wrote herself. We were in ninth grade catechism and Sister Alice Joan made us write five ways we intended to improve our lives as we prepared to enter the adult Catholic community. It took me ten seconds, after all, how tough is it to add onto ‘I disobeyed, I argued, I lost’?

  I really was going to try to change my ways, even though I was ticked when Sister Alice Joan told us we didn’t get to pick new confirmation names. The one time in my life when I could be somebody different, and I had to get stuck reaffirming my own name. Sara Elizabeth, how boring is that?

  And I say that’s the reason I didn’t make it two days past Confirmation before I was back to disobeying, arguing, and losing. If only that witch nun had let ‘Raquel’ Polokovich stand in for Elizabeth, things would be different.

  But look where I am now.

  “Sara,” Nina whispers. “Isn’t that your Dad?”

  And there he is, an eyeshot ahead of us, stumbling from The State Liquor Store, clutching a brown bag. I would know the broad shoulders and crew cut anywhere. “Let’s get out of here before he sees me.” We turn and run down the alley next to Benny’s.

  “Is he okay?” Nina pants after me.

  “He’s fine,” I shout back. That’s all we say until we come out on the next street, near St. Augustine’s Church. We suck in gulps of air and start home.

  Nina doesn’t look at me when she asks, “Was he drunk?”

  “No. He gets like that when he has to work a double.” Lie.

  “Oh.”

  I am such a liar. I don’t even have to think about them anymore, they just fall right out of my mouth. Smooth. Easy. Last week, when our neighbor to the right, Mrs. Peterson, wanted to know why Frank was ‘making such a racket’ at eleven o’clock at night, I told her he lost his watch, the one Mom had given him on their first anniversary and he was tearing the garage apart trying to find it. What was I going to tell her, the truth? That he was really ripping the garage apart looking for a bottle? And when our neighbor to the left, Mr. Jedinski, spotted him staggering around the backyard a few nights ago? I told him it was because of a bad reaction to some medicine.

  Right.

  It could all still be okay, nobody will have to know. All he has to do is stay inside when he gets plastered. Is it really that difficult?

  Nina and I make small talk the rest of the way home. Do I think pink and green go together? Am I going to hang out tonight? What time? Do I think that new guy from Pittsburgh, Peter Donnelly, is cute? Yes, maybe and definitely, especially the part about the new guy. We are on even ground again, relaxing, and I am feeling almost normal.

  And then I see him. Frank rolls out of his green pickup, hanging onto the door for support. I stiffen, Nina sips air beside me. He lifts his head in our direction, squints, and belts out, “Saaaara! Niiiiina Teggggretti!”

  “Mr. Polokovich.” Nina’s voice is thinner than a communion wafer. “Nice to see you.”

  Right. Nice to see you drunk, old man. I just nod and keep my mouth shut.

  “Well, I’ve got to get home. Bye Sara.” Nina is staring at the sidewalk. “Bye, Mr. Polokovich.”

  Frank falls back against the truck. “Good-bye, Nina Bellina, Spaghettina, Angelina, Rosarina—”

  “Bye,” I say, turning away. “Let’s go inside.” I take Frank’s arm and guide him toward the back porch.

  “Hey, it rhymed.” He lets out a laugh and a belch at the same time. “I’m a goddamn poet.”

  “Why don’t you lie down for a while?”

  “Why?” He cocks his head to the left, gets right in my face, so close I almost keel over from the fumes. “You think I’m half-lit, don’t you?”

  “No,” I lie. “You just look tired.”

  He belches again and smacks his lips. “I think I will take a nap before dinner.” He laughs, stumbles over the step into the kitchen. “I had a quick one,” he says, raising a finger the size of a small stump in the air. It wobbles back and forth. “Just one.”

  “I know.” And then another and another.

  He moves past me, the brown bag tucked against his chest. “Call me for dinner.” He makes it up the stairs, banging against the hallway like a pinball.

  The phone rings and I snatch it off the hook. Frank doesn’t like phones. “Hello?”

  “Sara? Hey, this is Jerry. Do you and Kay want to go to the beach tomorrow?”

  Jerry Jedinski, my next-door neighbor—one year older, six foot three, black-rimmed glasses, acne dotting the sides of his face like Orion’s Belt. In love with me since the fourth grade. “Hi Jerry. I don’t know right now, I’ll have to call you back.”

  Long pause. I can picture him standing there, his brown hair sticking straight up, even after numerous attempts to plaster it down with Brill Creme and his mother’s Final Net. How can somebody with a 4.0 GPA not get it? I’m. Not. Interested. In. Him.

  “Okay, Jerry?”

  “Uh, okay. Sure. Call me back.”

  “Bye,” I say and hang up. Jerry’s a plodder—he keeps calling even though I’ve told him ten thousand times we’re just friends. He says fine, he’s okay with that, but I see the way he looks at me sometimes, when he thinks I’m not watching, kind of like a stray puppy searching for a home. Well, he’s not going to find one with me.

  Chapter 3

  It is mid-June and Helen Polokovich’s roses cluster in cascades of red, yellow, and pink. Six bushes in full bloom, bunched together against an old picket fence, masking chipped, white paint. Even in darkness, I feel their beauty. I inhale the sweetness, extend my hands until my fingers brush the velvet of a petal.

  “You should have left him,” I murmur, stroking the petal. “We could be with Aunt Irene now, instead of here.” I sink to the ground, the earth’s dampness a welcome relief from the parched night. “I hate him. You know that, don’t you?”

  Then, I close my eyes and remember.

  Did you ever think about getting a divorce?

  My mother is shoveling peat moss around her roses, bare hands streaked black-brown. Working hands, that’s what she calls them. The thin gold band is all she wears on her left hand, nothing else, not even nail polish.

  It’s not that easy, Sara. You don’t just get a divorce.

  Some people do. Elizabeth Taylor does.

  She’s a movie star. She doesn’t count.

  Well, Mrs. Meyers got a divorce last year.

  She’s not Catholic. She’s Lutheran.

  What about Mrs. Paletto? She’s Catholic.

  Mrs. Paletto’s husband beat her. She had to leave him or be killed.

  He’s drinking. You know it. Just like you knew he was drinking that day in the garage when you came in on him.

  I know.

  He hid the bottle in the garbage.

  I know. I went back and checked later.

  Then why didn’t you tell him you found it, just say, ‘I found your Cutty Sark, you’re not fooling me.’

  He knows.

  And?

  He knows I know. That’s enough for now.

  So, you still love him. That’s why you stay, isn’t it?

  She brushes her hands together, let
s the dirt scatter around her, inspects each nail packed with black dirt. Finally, she says, The reasons people get married and the reasons they stay married aren’t always the same, most of the time they’re not the same. Sometimes love just dies on its own, or gets killed. And then people stay together for the children, the convenience, the comfort. Even a bad marriage is sometimes better than starting over, especially at forty-seven.

  Forty-seven isn’t that old.

  She smiles, a sad, wistful smile and turns away. It’s too old to change. I have you and Kay. It’s enough.

  Kay and I could help you, Mom. We could move, get jobs after school—

  It would never be that simple.

  But why?

  No one takes what belongs to Frank Polokovich.

  He—

  No, Sara.

  Why did you come back to Norwood? Why didn’t you stay in Buffalo?

  Your Grandmother got sick and I came home to take care of her. I was only planning to stay a few weeks until her insulin was under control and she could give herself her own shots.

  So, she talked you into staying?

  No. I met your father.

  ***

  “Kay? Are you ready yet?” I yell from the bottom of the stairs. Jerry says if we don’t leave by eleven thirty there’ll be wall-to-wall beach towels and nowhere for us. “Come on, Kay. Let’s go!” I want to be out of here before Frank gets back from wherever he is.

  The low, muffled groan frightens me. Kay? I fly up the stairs to our bedroom, honing in on the sound. Kay is lying on her left side, curled into a ball with the orange and brown afghan Aunt Irene made last year pulled to her chin. Her eyes are squeezed shut and her face looks like someone has erased the color from it, her lips, too.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Cramps,” she whispers. “Bad.”

  “Do you need the water bottle?”

  “Got it already.”

  “Did you take any aspirin?”

  “Hmm hmm.” It slips out more whimper than word.