Our New Normal (ARC)

by Colleen Faulkner

  I know I shouldn’t be embarrassed. I know not everyone lives in a nice house and has cars that are less than ten years old. I know how much money someone makes or how much education they have doesn’t define whether or not they’re good people. I know all those things. My mom taught me those things. But Tyler knew we were coming. He should have mowed the grass. Maybe cleaned the junk off the front porch. The adult diaper boxes have been sitting there for weeks, and it rained the other night, so now they’re soggy. No one wears diapers in Tyler’s house that I know of, but his stepdad likes to collect boxes. He’s always talking about getting the garage in shape. Tyler says he thinks if he collects enough cardboard boxes, the garage will magically come to life one night and everything will jump into the boxes and the boxes will slide into shelving J.J. is going to build. Like in that scene in that weird early Disney movie with Mickey Mouse.

  Dad, who is in the front passenger seat, glances in the back at me. “You okay?” he asks. He looks tired. And like he doesn’t want to be here anymore than I do.

  This was Mom’s idea, this powwow, as she called it. Which is probably a racist thing to say. We don’t have a drop of Native American blood in our heritage, so I don’t think we’re allowed to use that word unless we’re talking about going to an actual powwow. Which we did once when I was little and we were visiting a friend of Dad’s in Delaware.

  I can hear through the window the dogs going ape shit. Dad’s still looking at me.

  “I’m fine,” I tell him. “Fan-tastic.” I open the door, hoping I won’t be the emergency department’s next dog mauling.

  “You think we should wait? The dogs?” Dad asks me.

  “Nah.” My feet hit the driveway. “We’d already be mauled if they weren’t in their kennels.”

  “What?” he says.

  I slam the door. The three of us meet at the hood of the truck. Mom just got it the other day. It’s a black Ford F-150. Tyler said they run, like, forty K. I told him no way my mom would pay that. Plus, it’s, like, five years old and has a hundred thousand miles on it. I was surprised Mom actually bought it. She’d been talking about doing it all summer, but I didn’t think she’d really do it. I guess she’s serious about going into business for herself. She talked about doing that for years. I never thought it would happen.

  I kind of stand there for a minute, waiting for Tyler to come out of the house. I texted him twice on our way over, but he didn’t answer. Phone’s probably dead. He never remembers to charge it.

  The house is old and could use some work. Just some paint and someone either putting the shutters back on or taking them completely off would make it look a lot better. It used to be Tyler’s mom’s great-aunt’s or something. It’s two stories with only two bedrooms and one bathroom. It’s really small. It’s not like our house is huge, not like my friend Katy’s. But I can be alone in my house. Tyler has to share his bedroom with his stepbrother and their living room is really small so we hardly ever hang out there, except when everyone is gone, like right after school. Mostly we go to Tyler’s friend Rob’s house because his parents are never home.

  I glance at Dad and Mom. Mom is clutching her handbag like someone is going to run by and snatch it. They both look as uncomfortable as I feel.

  “Well,” Mom says.

  Well, what? I want to say. Instead, I just walk to the porch and go up the creaky steps. “Careful,” I mumble, pointing to a soft spot in the floorboards that I step over. At the door, I hesitate and then knock. Before I can pull my hand away, the door flings open, and Cricket, Tyler’s mom, is there in the doorway. She’s short and skinny and she’s always dyeing her thin, shoulder-length hair a different shade of black; today it looks blue. She’s still wearing her uniform from work. She’s a checker at Shaw’s grocery store. Still wearing her name tag that says Cricket, not Christine, which is her real name. I don’t know why, but I’m embarrassed by the name tag. Then I feel bad again that I would be embarrassed. Cricket works a lot of hours, always picking up extra shifts; she’s always wearing her weird polyester-jacket thing. And there’s nothing wrong with working at a grocery store. But no one when they’re my age says they want to be a cashier at a grocery store someday. And her feet always hurt and I know it’s got to be boring because working at the drugstore just the ten hours a week I work is sooooo boring.

  I know there’s nothing wrong with what Cricket does to feed her family, but I also know I don’t want my little boy to have to do that. I want more than a broken birdbath for him.

  “Come in, come in!” Cricket throws her arms around me and hugs me hard. She smells like BBQ potato chips. I think she’s addicted to them. Tyler says she eats two big bags a day. Which is crazy because she’s so skinny. That many calories, you would think she’d be huge. And be full of cancer because of the ingredients in cheap chips. Her lips are always a little orange from the food dye in them. She kisses my cheek with her orange lips, which grosses me out. She usually hugs me when she sees me, but she doesn’t usually kiss me. I don’t know what’s up with that.

  I manage to escape her arms and duck into the house. Mom and Dad both get hugs. I don’t look back to see if Cricket kisses them. I don’t see Tyler in the living room. Just J.J. He’s asleep in his new recliner that replaced the one the dogs ate. I hate to feed into stereotypes, but if you were casting a part in a play or a movie and you wanted an auto mechanic from Maine, J.J. is who you would pick. He’s average height with brown hair and a little bit of beer belly, though not any more than my dad’s got. But J.J.’s hands are permanently dirty, with black under his nails, and he always smells like gasoline to me, even just after he’s taken a shower.

  Mom says stereotypes fundamentally have a basis in truth. I guess this is what she means. J.J.’s also got bad teeth. I think he had a crack problem a long time ago when Cricket met him when Tyler was in elementary school. That was when they used to live closer to Portland. I guess Cricket told J.J. she wouldn’t marry him if he didn’t get himself straight. Good for her. Good for J.J. for being strong enough to break an addiction. I’ve been reading about the opioid epidemic in the United States for a while. I know what a big deal it is for J.J. to get clean.

  “Tyler upstairs?” I ask Cricket. I have to talk over the TV that’s always on really loud. And I mean it’s always on. I don’t think they ever turn it off. Not even when they eat. They don’t eat dinner in their kitchen like we do. They eat in front of the TV. Which is like a huge no in our house. We don’t do cell phones at the table, either.

  “Not home yet.” Cricket gives me a quick smile that looks forced. “Not yet. Would anyone like ice tea?”

  Mom and Dad are just standing there in the little foyer area where there are shoes piled up and chewed-up rawhide dog toys. A couple of the shoes are chewed up, too. J.J. takes in dogs people don’t want, usually because they’re too mean or too wild. He’s got four right now. All mixed breeds, but they all look like they have some pit bull in them to me. J.J. told me that pit bulls aren’t naturally dangerous dogs. That their owners make them that way. I get what he’s saying, but whenever you hear about a dog eating its owner or a neighbor’s little kid, it’s always a pit bull. Thinking about that, I make up my mind that the dogs aren’t going to be allowed around our baby. It’s just not worth the risk. I don’t like the dogs anyway. They jump up and sometimes they have fleas and ticks on them.

  “Where is he?” I ask, realizing Cricket’s Kia wasn’t in the driveway. Which means he took her car. She doesn’t let him take it very often because she says he never puts gas in it.

  NASCAR is on their gigantic TV mounted to the wall, which I don’t understand because they just race on weekends and it’s a Thursday. Is there really such a thing as NASCAR reruns? I’m not really into guys driving a car around in circles burning fossil fuels but it’s something Tyler and his stepdad can actually talk about, so I get why Tyler follows it.

  “Tyler?” I ask because Cricket looks confused or startled or something.


  “Oh. Said he had to borrow a schoolbook from Rob.” She gives a wave as if it’s nothing to worry about. “Said he’d be right back. Right back.”

  I purposely don’t make eye contact with Mom because I know what she’s thinking. That Tyler’s not here because he doesn’t want to talk about the baby. She thinks he doesn’t want to talk about him and me and our baby. She’s wrong, though. I know she’s wrong because Tyler loves me. And he’s going to love our baby. This is all just a lot for him to handle. He hasn’t had the same stable environment I’ve always had. His real dad beat the crap out of him when he was little. And he beat up Cricket, too. J.J. smacks Tyler once in a while, but nothing like his real dad did. I bet that kind of thing can mess with your head. Especially when you realize you’re going to be a dad.

  Of course, I know very well Tyler isn’t borrowing a schoolbook from Rob. I’m not that dumb. He was probably going over to smoke pot, which I told him he can’t do anymore because we can’t spend the money. He needs to save the money he makes at his uncle’s garage for the baby.

  “Ice tea?” Cricket asks Mom and Dad again. “Or beer. We got beer.”

  “Iced tea would be nice.” Dad sounds stiff.

  He trimmed his beard. It looks nice a little shorter, but I wonder why he thought he needed to do it to come here. Mom’s been bugging him about it for weeks. He’s met Tyler’s parents before. I know he knows trimmed beards aren’t required.

  “Iced tea, thank you,” Mom says.

  “Sit down. Sit down.” Cricket repeats things a lot. She grabs a paper plate off the end of the couch that has half a soggy sandwich on it. “J.J. They’re here.” She gives her husband a poke. When he doesn’t move and he doesn’t open his eyes, she gives him a hard nudge in the shoulder with her fist. Not quite a punch, but close. “J.J.!”

  Tyler’s stepfather jerks awake and the remote control to the TV falls out of his hand onto the stained green carpet. I don’t know what kind of DNA is on the carpet and I don’t want to know.

  Dad picks the remote up as he walks by and hands it back. “Hey, J.J.,” he says.

  J.J. grunts something that isn’t real words and wipes his mouth with the back of his greasy hand.

  Mom takes a seat on the couch where the paper plate was a minute ago and Cricket goes into the kitchen.

  “Want any help?” I call after Tyler’s mom. I don’t want to help with the iced tea but I want to stand here looking at the three of them even less.

  “Got it,” Cricket calls back. “Already made up. I get the kind in a can. Just add water. Just the water.”

  I stand there feeling stupid. J.J.’s fully awake now and he pulls the lever on the side of the chair and lowers his feet. He’s wearing heavy boots and they smell like the rest of him. The faint scent of gasoline is starting to make me queasy. This morning I barfed before school. Mom said it happens sometimes. She said she barfed a lot when she was pregnant with me although she says that at almost eighteen weeks, I should be out of the barfing stage. That makes me feel better, though not at the moment when I’m sitting on the tile floor in the bathroom waiting to see if I’m going to barf again. I really haven’t thrown up that many times, but when I do, it’s always in the morning.

  I pull my phone out of the back pocket of my jean shorts. I couldn’t button them so I use a hair tie looped around the button to keep them closed.

  You better get home, I text Tyler. I’m here with your mom and J.J. and my parents

  I send it and wait. No bubbles. But I can see he’s read it.

  You’re supposed to be here, I text.

  I wait. Still nothing.

  “Here we go,” Cricket sings, carrying three glasses of tea. The glasses have pigs on them. Cricket has a thing for pigs. Like Dad’s mom used to have for loons, I guess. Cricket wears sleep pants with pigs on them. And T-shirts. And socks.

  I take a glass of iced tea, even though I don’t want it. Cricket steps into the living room area and hands Mom and Dad their glasses. They both take sips of the tea. I don’t because I know it’s nasty; I’ve had it before. Artificial ingredients. Chemicals that could harm a developing fetus.

  J.J. is staring at the TV. It’s still loud. Maybe J.J. and Cricket have hearing loss. Chicken or the egg?

  Cricket barely drops her butt onto the flowered velour couch beside Mom when she bounces up again. “Oh! I almost forgot! I wanted to show you, Olivia. I bought some baby clothes!”

  No one calls my mom Olivia, even though that’s her given name. Well, Gran sometimes. But not often.

  I tip my glass, pretending to take a sip, and accidentally make eye contact with Mom. Tyler coming? she mouths.

  I nod quickly, like Of course. But I’m not fooling her. I can see it in her eyes. And all of a sudden, I want to cry.

  Cricket is back in the living room in a minute with several baby sleeper things on white plastic hangers. She’s got a little football tucked under her arm. Of course there’s no way my son is playing football. Doesn’t she know the statistics on head injuries in the sport?

  Cricket’s all excited and shows the clothes to Mom, not me, which I think is weird. One has race cars on it, one has pigs, and the other, footballs. She hands the football to Dad. Dad knows less than I know about football. We’re baseball fans.

  Mom makes some appropriate comment to Cricket about the ugly sleepers being cute. Even from where I’m standing, I can tell they’re thin and made of some kind of fabric that’s going to burst into flames if my baby gets too close to the sun. There are price tags hanging from them, so they’re new, so I guess that’s nice. But I’d rather buy something secondhand that’s better quality. I like secondhand clothes and we have a cool shop in town. They have a whole wall of baby clothes.

  I glance at J.J. He’s watching the TV. I look at the TV. The cars are still going around the track. The race was in Las Vegas, apparently.

  “Is Tyler coming?” Mom asks Cricket. She’s set her glass on the floor next to her feet.

  “He said he’d be right back.” Cricket lays the sleepers on her lap and keeps brushing her hand over them like she’s petting them.

  Mom looks at Dad. I can tell she wants him to say something. He takes a big gulp of iced tea.

  Mom looks at Cricket, then at J.J., who still hasn’t said a word to us, and then at Cricket again. Mom clears her throat. “My parents are expecting us for dinner,” she says, which is a total lie. We’re supposed to stop at Hannaford on the way home and pick up a rotisserie chicken for them because it’s Thursday and Gran likes to get the special that includes potatoes and a veggie. But I support Mom on what she would call a little white lie because being here is beyond awkward. I can’t believe Tyler isn’t here. I feel like I’m going to cry again.

  “I know this isn’t the best situation,” Mom says, her voice sounding so weird that I kind of feel sorry for her. I feel bad I screwed up like this. I feel bad that I’ve put my parents in this position.

  “But I think we need to discuss how we’re going to proceed,” Mom goes on, folding her hands in her lap. “How we’re . . . how Tyler and Hazel are going to share responsibilities for the baby and the . . . finances.”

  “I just think this is the cutest thing.” Cricket holds up the pig sleeper. “J.J., can’t you turn that down?” she calls in his direction. “I’m just so excited about buying baby clothes. Aren’t you excited about buying baby clothes, Olivia?”

  I carry my glass into the kitchen and pour it down the sink that’s green. Like, the actual sink color is green, not white or black. This is the first green sink I ever saw. I hear Mom’s voice, but not what she’s saying. Then Cricket’s voice. She’s still going on about the cute clothes.

  I lean against the sink and check my phone. Tyler hasn’t texted me back. He isn’t going to. And he’s not coming, either. And Mom and Dad’s talk with Cricket and J.J. is going to be a waste of time. I feel like going into the living room and shouting that over the roar of the cars driving in circles burning the earth�
�s resources.

  Instead, I just stand here and wait for this to be over.

  13

  Liv

  That was certainly a disaster, I think as I open the door to get into my truck.

  I don’t know exactly what my expectations were going into Tyler’s parents’ home, but I assumed we’d at least talk about Tyler and Hazel and their situation. Talk about how they, us as their families, were going to share the expenses of the baby and the child care.

  We never got there.

  First, there was the awkwardness of the fact that Tyler wasn’t present. Which no one spoke of, making it more awkward. Then, every time I tried to move the conversation in the direction of the purpose of the meeting, above the roar of a prerecorded NASCAR race on a television the size of a refrigerator, Cricket changed the subject. With surprisingly great aplomb, I have to admit. I’d say something about coming up with a budget and she’d start talking about a baby walker or a high chair she was going to buy, or worse, a high chair a friend of hers bought for her grandchildren. I tried several times to loop back around to the original thread and Cricket would head off down another rabbit hole involving baby blankets or hand-crocheted booties someone sells at the church fall festival.

  The only thing we did determine in the hour we were there was that Hazel and Tyler would not be moving in together. I think Cricket had it in her head that maybe Tyler could come stay with Hazel at our house, at least “to help out right after the baby is born,” but Oscar stepped in on that one and stated in a deep voice, “I’m not comfortable with that, Cricket. Sorry. Not gonna happen.”

  I could have kissed him when he said it.

  Then Cricket admitted that while she’d love to have Hazel and the baby stay with them, there just wasn’t enough room in their house for two more people, especially with a crib and high chair and changing table and all the other stuff a baby needs.