Pretending Normal

by Mary Campisi

  It’s because of Buffalo and the Fuller Brush man. Nobody forgets. I’ll bet every one of those Garden Club members calls her in private. Save my hydrangea! What’s happened to my rhododendron? My lilies! Please, Peck, please, what do I do?

  Hypocrites.

  She turns into Arnold’s Tastee Freeze, shuts off the engine. “I need something cold. You?”

  “Sure.” She treats me once a week—Pepsi, ice cream cone, Fritos. Does she do this with her driving students?

  “I’m going to have the orange soda float,” she says, unfolding her long, bony frame from the Caprice. “What about you?”

  “Twist cone dipped in chocolate.” Mom used to bring Kay and me here in the summer. Kay always picked the root beer float, Mom a small, vanilla cone, me the twist cone dipped in chocolate. I remember my mother sitting at one of Arnold’s paint-chipped picnic tables, carefully licking her small, pathetic, vanilla cone. Couldn’t she at least have gotten something that said I’m worth more than a forty-five cent vanilla cone? I am suddenly angry at her for dying and leaving Kay and me alone to deal with him. Most of all, I am angry at her for always choosing that stupid cone.

  “Sara?”

  “Huh?” Ms. O’Grady is holding out my cone. “Oh. Thanks.” I take it and we make our way to the far picnic table.

  “It will be good when school starts,” she says, “take your mind off of things.”

  “Four more days.” The chocolate coating sticks to the roof of my mouth.

  “Are you ready?”

  “No.” I don’t want to see Peter and his new cheerleader girlfriend kissing at his locker.

  Ms. O’Grady digs her spoon into a heap of orange float, comes up with a chunk of vanilla ice cream. “Nobody ever is,” she says, matter-of-factly. “If you wait for the exact moment when you think you’re ready, your life will be over.”

  “I guess,” is all I say.

  We are quiet then, eating under the slow heat of the afternoon sun, our heads hot and shiny, bits of sweat tickling our cheeks. It is a companionable silence, comfortable, loose. It is now, between licks of twist cone dipped in chocolate that I realize how much I like this tall, angular woman with the shorn head and half-glasses.

  “You’re quiet today,” she says.

  “Just thinking.” And then, “Could I get a scholarship to U Penn if I’m number one in my class?”

  “I’m sure you could, though I don’t know how much they’d offer, but you’ve still got two years of high school.”

  “But I have to plan. I have to know.”

  Ms. O’Grady shakes her head. “Life has a way of messing up the most carefully laid plans.”

  “I know, but I need a scholarship. It’s the whole reason behind the books and the practice exams. I need a scholarship so I can get of here.”

  “Have you talked to your father about this?”

  “Hah!” I laugh. “No, not exactly.”

  “What about your Aunt Irene? Can she guide you?”

  “Not unless I’m picking out nail polish,” I say, and am immediately sorry for the remark. “She’s not into education that much.”

  Ms. O’Grady spoons out a chuck of vanilla ice cream. “I could help you sort through it all, if you’d like. I can help write letters to different colleges, maybe formulate a plan, with U Penn as your target.”

  “Would you go see it with me?”

  “I…” Her brown eyes widen with something close to fear. “I don’t know about that. You see, I really don’t travel much.”

  “Because of what happened in Buffalo?” I blurt out. “Is it true?” Then, “I’m sorry.” But still, the intense desire to know if this woman has ever worn anything other than tan Naturalizer soft-touch shoes persists.

  And yet, I cannot believe I have actually put sound to questions that have floated in my brain since the first time I heard the story of Peck O’Grady. Swirls of vanilla pool around the edges of my cone and all I can think of is how much I have damaged the fragile bond between us.

  “Do you know you’re the only one who’s ever asked me that?” Her voice is calm, matter-of-fact.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have. It’s none of my business.”

  She goes on as though she hasn’t heard me. “They didn’t have the courage to ask, none of them.” Pause. “Thirty-one years and still nobody’s ever asked me, not face-to-face, until you. You’re the first one who’s had the guts to do that.” Her voice fades in and out. “You’d think my mother would have asked me about it, wouldn’t you, would have at least said, ‘Evie,’ that’s what she called me, ‘Evie, now tell me the truth, right now. Tell me.’” She sets her cup down on the picnic table, scratches her head. “She didn’t say anything. Not a word. All those years and nothing between us but talk about how to use cornstarch instead of flour when you make chicken and dumplings or how my father prefers Kosher dills in the refrigerator section of the supermarket. Or why a woman can never have too many dishtowels. Chatter, Sara, that’s all, senseless chatter. And my father, well, he saw more than he wanted to and I think to this day, when he looks at me, he sees it still.”

  I nod but she doesn’t see me because she’s staring off toward the trees. “But my mother never asked what really happened. She didn’t want to know, none of them did.” She scratches the top of her salt and pepper head again, ruffles a short clump of hair. “The truth is too sharp for most people, too ugly, and they can’t look at it for what it is. They need it buffed out so they can just pretend around it. That’s what people do, Sara. They just pretend around the truth.”

  I meet her gaze over the top of her half glasses, but say nothing.

  “His name was Jack,” she tells me. “I was in love with him.”

  Jack. The Fuller Brush man with a wife and three kids.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Her laugh is ripped away from deep inside. “Save the ‘sorrys’, Sara. You’ll have plenty of time to use them when you’re an adult. Plenty of time for regrets, too.”

  My heart is swollen for Ms. O’Grady and her lost love, her lost life.

  “I had a baby. Did you know I had a baby?” She is looking straight at me, but she doesn’t see me. “That’s always been the big question in town, hasn’t it? ‘Did Peck O’Grady have a baby?’ Yes, yes, his name was Andrew Gregory,” she says the name with a gentle caress. “He had black, curly hair and the bluest eyes, like a lake with the sun shining on it. And his skin”—she closes her eyes, takes a deep breath—“was softer than anything I’d ever felt before. He was so beautiful,” the words are whisper thin, “so beautiful.”

  The pain on her face turns itself inside out, sinks into her skin and stretches the grief over her eyes, pulls on her lips. “You’re the only person who knows his name… you and the sisters of St. Catherine’s Home for Unwed Mothers.”

  Where is Andrew Gregory now? He must be a grown man, thirty-one or so, with children of his own. “Did you ever try to find him?”

  The light in her dark eyes burns hotter than the sun on my head. “I know where he is. I’ve always known.”

  “You have?”

  “He’s in Lackawana, New York, a small town just outside Buffalo.”

  “Have you ever seen him?”

  She shakes her head. “No.”

  “Do you think he knows? About you, I mean.”

  The faintness of a smile drifts onto her face. “I like to think so.”

  “Maybe… would you ever consider trying to see him again?”

  “I’d want that more than anything in the world.”

  There is hope here, I sense it. “Maybe he’d like to see you, too. If it were me, I’d like to see my real mother. What if you sent him a letter… or called him?”

  “I can’t. Andrew died two days after he was born. Underdeveloped lungs they said. They buried him in the private plot behind St. Catherine’s. August fifteenth, nineteen forty-five.” Then her eyes meet mine and I see the truth staring back at me. “That’s the day I died, too.
”

  Chapter 18

  Our house is filled with a waiting these next few weeks that reminds me of the moments before a summer storm, when the winds are sharp and hot, and the sun’s brightness transcends a sky filled with black clouds near twilight and you not only see the warning, you smell it.

  School has started, and for the first three days I do not see him, but he’s somewhere in this building, maybe even in the next classroom and one day soon, I will turn and he will be there, and I will remember everything, and my insides will twist and turn until I feel like puking on the tan linoleum. And then I will see them walking together, shoulders touching, holding hands, and he’ll be rubbing her thumb the way he used to rub mine and I’ll have to see that, and I’ll want to scream, scream, scream, so loud that the principal, Mr. Weldon, who is also an ex-wrestling coach, will whisk me to his office and threaten to call my father if I don’t get hold of myself.

  It is on the fourth day as I am walking out of Algebra toward my locker that I spot them holding hands just as I’ve imagined, Peter leaning close, mouth pulled into that easy smile. There are clumps of students separating us, but still, I see the smile, the hand holding, the shoulders brushing.

  Kelly is sweet and gushy like Juicy Fruit gum in a parched mouth. She has the palest blue eyes in a face that’s whiter than a slice of winter moon and her inky hair trails halfway down her back and accounts for half her body weight.

  She looks nothing like me, acts nothing like me… Kelly giggles and squeals. Maybe I should have giggled at Peter’s drug dealing, pretended around the truth as Ms. O’Grady says. Maybe then I’d still be his girlfriend.

  Could I really have done that?

  Peter pulls Kelly toward one of the lockers, flips it open, tosses in a few books, and slams it shut. He turns and sees me then. Something flashes between us, powering up, fusing, and I have to look away. When I glance back, he is kissing Kelly, one arm slung around her waist, but his eyes are on me.

  I have erected barricades to protect myself from Peter and Kelly Jordan, but I am not prepared for the invasion of Rudy Minnoni. That comes the next day when I am at my locker, grabbing my Spanish workbook.

  “Well, well, if it isn’t little Sara Polokovich.” Rudy throws his hulking frame against the locker next to mine. “So”—he crosses his arms, runs a beady gaze over me—“what do you think of Peter’s new chick?”

  “Kelly’s nice.” If you like cotton candy.

  “Nice. Yeah.” He nods his fuzzy head. “I’d say she’s nice. Peter thinks she’s nice, too.” He lowers his voice. “Real nice.”

  “Lay off, Rudy.”

  He leans in close, his army jacket reeking of smoke. “I think you’re a lot nicer than Kelly Jordan, you know what I mean?” A smile spreads somewhere in that bush of hair on his face. “Maybe me and you could get together sometime, what do you say?”

  He’s actually serious. I turn away, and start down the hall, propelled by the need to escape his filthy stare.

  But his full-bellied laugh follows me. “Think about it. Let me know.”

  ***

  “Why?”

  “Because you’ve been mooning over that damn ex-boyfriend of yours long enough, and Conchetta needs to get out and enjoy herself.”

  “I’m not mooning over him. I don’t even think about him anymore.”

  “Good, then it’s all set. We’re going to the dance.”

  “Okay, fine, we’ll go.”

  “Nina?” Conchetta’s back is pressed against the Mick Jagger poster on my wall. “I don’t know how to dance.”

  “Neither does anyone else,” Nina says. “You’ll be fine. All you have to do is watch me and do what I do. Besides, we’ve got two days to practice. Okay?”

  Conchetta looks at me. “Okay, Sara?”

  “If Tina Turner is giving dance lessons, how can we say no?”

  “See? We’ll have a blast.” Nina flings her arms across the bed, stretches her body flat. “There’s just one thing I didn’t tell you, Sara.” She sneaks a look at me. “Now, before you go getting all worked up, I just want you to listen. Okay?”

  “What did you do now?”

  “It’s no big deal, really. It’s just that Jerry and I were talking and he mentioned the dance and how you can’t hide in your house all the time.”

  “I thought Conchetta was the one you wanted to get out of the house.”

  “It’s both of you, actually.”

  “And where’s Jerry fit into all this?”

  “He’s taking you.”

  Frank always says you can’t be nice to people. He’s talking about doing something you don’t really want to do because somebody asks you to do it. Not a close friend or relative, either, but somebody who doesn’t really matter in your life. Like the time he loaned out his new wheelbarrow to a guy up the street and it came back with forty holes in it where the guy used an ice pick to break up shale. Or, the time he got a flat tire driving a co-worker home because the guy didn’t want to take his new LeSabre out in the rain.

  So, now I am thinking about this as I wait for Jerry to pick me up and drive me to the Teen Center. I’ve told him three times in the past two days that this is not a date. He says he knows, but he doesn’t.

  Why would he ask what I’m wearing? He better not try to match his shirt to mine. And he better not buy me flowers like we’re going to Homecoming. You never know about Jerry which is what is freaking me out right now. You really can’t be nice to people. When I spot him walking up my front steps, I rush out the door. And then I turn around and stare. “Jerry?”

  “Hi. Ready?”

  “What did you do to your hair?”

  “Like it? I used Sun-in.”

  A smear of orange fuzz covers his head. Even his father’s Brill Creme can’t keep it in place or hide the fringe of dark roots outlining his face.

  “Where are your glasses?”

  “Contacts,” he says, blinking twice. Minus glasses, his face looks like a map dotted with red pinholes.

  “Oh.” I don’t know where to look, so I settle on his neck which is streaked orange and gold. “Did you use QT?”

  “Yeah.” He holds out an arm which is a pumpkin color on top and a pale ginger on the underside. “No wonder they call it Quick Tan. I did it this afternoon. Kind of hard to put on, but it really does the trick.”

  “Why?”

  “A white shirt looks wimpy if you don’t have a tan.”

  Which brings to mind the shirt—stark white, snow white, blinding white, polyester, stretched across his narrow chest.

  “They didn’t have my size, so I got the medium.”

  “Oh.” Peter has this shirt, but it looks nothing like this on him.

  “Come on, let’s go.” Jerry’s blinking again as he points to the white Pinto with the black racing stripe parked along the curb. “I heard the band is supposed to be really good.”

  He opens my door, waits until I am tucked inside to close it. “You can play whatever you want,” he says, once he’s in the driver seat. “There’s a stack on the floor in the case.” He shifts the car into Drive. “Sorry, I don’t have any Stones, but there’s Chicago, Elton John, Led Zeppelin, and pretty much everything else.”

  “Barry Manilow?” I say, holding up a tape.

  Jerry’s skin burns pink under the orange tan. “It’s my mother’s.”

  “I thought she hated this car.”

  “She does, but she loves Barry Manilow and Dad’s car doesn’t have an eight-track.”

  I settle for Led Zeppelin. “Don’t forget we have to pick up Nina and Conchetta.”

  “Actually”—there is the burned pink flashing across his face again—“they’re meeting us there.”

  “Since when?”

  “That was the plan. Didn’t Nina tell you?”

  “No. Jerry, this is not a date.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t like you that way, and you know that.” I’m going to strangle Nina. “Take me home.
”

  “No. I understand. You’ve told me enough times. It’s just, Nina and I heard Peter was going to be there with Kelly and we thought you should go to show him you’re over him.”

  “By bringing along a boyfriend?”

  He shrugs and the shirt stretches tighter. “Well, yeah.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “It was Nina’s idea.”

  “Figures.”

  “Let’s just go, okay? She’s waiting for us.”

  “I’m sure she is.” That’s all I say the rest of the way because I’m too busy deciding if I will scream at Nina or just blow her off.

  Unfortunately, I don’t have a chance to do either because she slaps her hands across my back and hugs me the second we enter the Center. “Sara, please don’t be mad,” she shouts over the music. “Please. I didn’t want to see you dragging around anymore. I did it for you.”

  That’s like saying somebody shot your fingers off because you couldn’t keep them away from French fries.

  She points her hand at the dance floor. “Look at Conchetta!”

  And there she is, swirling to the music in her red shirt and black jeans, head thrown back, earrings glinting in the light, waving her hands in the air, and laughing.

  “Is that Henry Wallenski?”

  “Yeah, they’ve been dancing since we got here.”

  “Isn’t he going to be a priest?”

  “Maybe not.” Nina squeezes my hand. “Don’t be mad, okay?”

  “Don’t ever do this again.”

  “Okay, I promise, I’ll never do it again. You promise you’re going to have a good time and forget that jerk. Speaking of, what’s with Jerry?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  Jay Galeston grabs Nina’s hand and pulls her to the dance floor, leaving me standing there, alone.

  So, it is me and Jerry.

  And what choice do I have, but to dance? At least this way, I don’t have to talk or spend much time looking at his orange and white body which reminds me of a Creamsicle. Actually, he’s a decent dancer, even if his moves are awfully similar to jump shots and slam dunks. At least he’s moving. And he’s smart enough to know better than to hang his fuzzy head on my shoulder when the slow dances start. Even Jerry isn’t that naive. So where are Peter and Kelly? I try not to look around but that’s like saying don’t notice the one-eyed giant next to you.