The Woman Who Tried to Be Normal

by Anna Ferrara

  “Just checking on our husbands.” Ethel spoke for both of us this time. “Just making sure they aren’t out there grabbing at the boobies of some Latina babes young enough to be our children or... her.” She gestured towards Weslyn but that only made the fire truck sirens in my ears get louder.

  Weslyn’s eyebrows were pointed all the way down in the middle but Rolf’s went up. He looked terribly amused even though his sister was looking not in the least amused at all.

  “How did you find us?” Weslyn asked Ethel. “Hm?” She looked her from top to bottom, then at me, then her again and finally settled her eyes on me for good. She held her eyes in mine in a fixed, unblinking way, as if trying to see into my head, or, maybe, see if I could hold my eyes in hers for long periods.

  I knew it was important I did just that, just to prove I could, but, as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t. The longer her eyes spent locked with mine, the louder the sirens in my ears got. Soon, it was deafening and hurt my ear drums. I began to feel like my head was vibrating from all that noise and that the vibrations were running down my skin, into my muscles and nerves and bones and capillaries. That sensation made me desperate to peel off my flesh and run from it, and her, screaming! I had to look away. I just had to or I would have ended up wincing and kicking and screaming within seconds! So I did.

  “Hm,” Weslyn said.

  I imagined she saw then all the things I didn’t want her to see, and it made my mouth fill with bad sauerkraut.

  “We saw you walking into the house when we were sightseeing at the lighthouse on the beach,” Ethel suddenly said on my behalf, to my surprise. “We didn’t wake up planning to do this. We saw our husbands walk into this house by sheer chance and found it fishy that they weren’t at the morgue as they said they would be. We should be the ones asking you questions. What the hell are you guys doing in there? And why in the world are you holding hunting rifles?”

  “Sightseeing,” Rolf said at once, without batting an eyelid, as if he had planned on saying so a really long time ago. “Just immersing ourselves in the local culture.”

  They didn’t say anything more than that.

  Chapter 24

  17 July 1975, Thursday

  “What the hell were you thinking?” Baker yelled in whisper.

  We were back in our hotel room. Me at the edge of the bed he’d sat me down on, after he told me not to move; him pacing the small carpeted space in front of me while glancing periodically at the walls as if petrified someone might be listening through them.

  I heard drumbeats in my ears just looking at him even though he’d already shut all the curtains within the room and checked that the door was properly locked three times over.

  “What do you know?”

  “I know nothing. What’s going on, Hank? What were you doing in that house? Whose house was that?”

  “Never ask me about my work, Helen! I told you! Many times! You do not ask me about work, ever!”

  He walked from my left to my right then back to the left then back to the right over and over again at great speed, as if he were in a hurry to get something done—though it was not obvious what. Sparkly green lines that looked like electrical currents to me appeared around the edges of his person and extended towards the middle of him. I began hearing the crackling of wood burning within a fire.

  Baker was furious but that did not bother me. I saw only my opportunity to bring his job into conversation. In all my months married to him, there’d never been an opportunity as natural as this one was. With the matter freshly out in the open, I could ask about his job without him ever knowing I’d been thinking about it all this time. “You’re not really an aircraft engineer, are you?” I said to the carpet, in a whisper that was many decibels softer than his.

  I never expected what came next.

  A thick, heavy palm crashed against my cheek with enough force to propel my entire head ninety degrees to the right and pull the muscles within my neck into unnatural positions that made the sensory nerves within them scream in pain. A ear-splitting clap sounded just millimetres away from my ear and was quickly followed by a resounding ringing that seemed to be emanating from the depths of my eardrum.

  I tasted beef and sauerkraut then. Shock and fear. The exact taste of one of those big dinners my mother used to cook every Sunday before the war began. When my head ricocheted back into its original position and my eyes widened themselves protectively, I found Hank glaring at me with an aggression I had never seen on him before that day.

  He looked twice his usual size and sounded like a wooden hut on fire. All the charm he usually had on his face was no longer there; those rugged, craggy features looked no longer handsome but brutal.

  There was no scrubbing of rough brush in my ears so I knew he felt no shame about having put his palm to my cheek and would not hesitate to do it again if I ever gave him any good reason to.

  “You will not ask me about my work ever again. Nor will you ask yourself, or anyone else about it. Ever. Have I made myself clear?”

  I could hardly hear him with all the ringing going on in my ear and I was rather distracted by the throbbing in my left cheek that was pumping sauerkraut into the taste buds at the back of my mouth, yet I nodded. I could tell he was expecting me to.

  “It is for your own good, honey. Believe it or not. For your own safety. You need to tell yourself you never saw anything,” he whispered.

  I nodded again. His hand had curled into the shape of a grapefruit-sized fist and I was determined not to give it any good reason to come near my body. “I’m sorry, Hank,” I added in that Marilyn Monroe voice he liked, just so he wouldn’t know I was tasting blood in my mouth, oozing from the back of my throat and making its way towards the centre—my way of experiencing anger. “I won’t ever do nothing as stupid as that again, I promise.”

  I had no way of knowing if any of the blood I was tasting was real. It felt real, but then again, it always did. I would have to check later, but not in front of Baker.

  He began sighing, with little black crosses whizzing past the top of his head—the sign a human being was feeling relief. The green trembly electrical lines over his person had retreated to the edges of his body then vanished so I knew my apology worked. He took me into his arms, pulled me to his chest and squeezed hard, as if he truly believed doing so would be sufficient to make up for the pain he had only just brought to my flesh.

  I let him do whatever he wanted, clung onto his Hawaiian shirt like a woman in love and pretended like I was happy to be that close to him again. You wouldn’t have been able to tell how much faecal matter I was tasting as I did so or how much I was beginning to dislike the scent of him. More blood was rushing into the middle of my mouth with every passing second and my face was starting to burn while my heart fought to keep going with a vengeance yet all I looked was demure and docile—just the way he liked me to be.

  In my mind though, all the bruises of varying sizes on Gigi’s face and arms were coming back to me. I hadn’t thought of them since having seen them, but I was then.

  It was normal for a husband to beat up his wife, I remembered, but I also realised then how awful normal felt for the wife being beaten. Normal didn’t feel right.

  Just as abruptly as Baker’s hand had come on my cheek, sour lemons joined the blood in my mouth. The hairs on my arms began to stand.

  I knew at once we were being watched. But where from?

  I ran my eyes around what was in front of me till I saw a dark line being replaced by a blinding white of sunlight in the middle of one of the pairs of curtains.

  Baker hadn’t closed the curtains tightly enough. He’d left a hairline slit open and as a result, his worst fears had come true. Someone, or some thing, had been watching us. And likely heard everything we said.

  Question was, why was he, she, or it choosing to stay out of sight?

  Chapter 25

  18 July 1975, Friday

  We packed up a
nd got on a flight back to Los Angeles the very next morning, three days earlier than we’d been supposed to.

  On the plane, I found myself unable to make conversation while seated next to Baker, although I’d pulled it off quite smoothly on the way over. Charlie and Ethel were seated behind us and I had a store of references in my mind as to how normal people interacted with friends seated behind of or in front of them on flights, but somehow I was just no longer interested in putting in the effort to be normal. Normal just wasn’t something I felt like I wanted to be any longer, now that I knew what it entailed. What I wanted more was for my mouth to stop tasting like blood. And for the ringing in my ears to stop, and for the sprain in my neck and the broken capillaries in my cheek to heal themselves.

  I didn’t understand why Baker did it. He’d never hit Violet, as far as I knew, so why me? Why was I always getting beat up when other people didn’t? I could tell he was afraid of the consequences of his superiors finding out I was now aware of what they’d been doing in that house but why hit me to get me to keep quiet about it? Why not just tell me? Nicely? Unless—

  He had already experienced the consequences of a wife who knew too much once before?

  From my investigation of Baker, I knew he spoke with Charlie as if he truly believed Violet had been killed by an alien. But what if those weren’t his true thoughts? Was that why he slapped me? To keep me safe from Violet’s fate?

  And what now?

  I had already found out everything I could possibly know from Baker. To find out what he didn’t know, I was going to have to get closer to his associates. Charlie, perhaps? Or Rolf? Or… I shuddered just thinking her name... Weslyn, who Baker and Charlie hadn’t known of until their supervisors made them meet in La Paz.

  It wouldn’t be easy at all, especially since I was now Baker’s wife. I made a wrong move choosing Baker as the person to get close to in the first place. I hadn’t found out all that much from living with him and I was going to have to think harder than ever to find a way around my status as his wife now. I had only my own bad judgement to blame.

  I began wishing I’d chosen to have the affair with his sixty-year-old supervisor over marrying him.

  “You’ve been awfully quiet.”

  I had been seated alone at the lounge area of the plane, thinking about my next moves while drinking whisky from a plastic cup in an attempt to remove the unpleasant taste of blood from my mouth so the sudden female voice in my ear startled me and made me look.

  It was Ethel. With that look that made those cheery saxophones go off in my ears again, only browner and with more glow than usual. She smiled, took the chair opposite me then ordered a gin and a bowl of nuts from the stewardess who came to ask her if she would like refreshments. Back then, planes had lounge areas where all passengers could sit themselves away from their assigned seats, without seat belts, and stretch their legs while enjoying snacks and drinks.

  “Hank gave you an earful last night?” she asked when the stewardess left.

  Our eyes met and all I could think about was how lucky Ethel was because Charlie didn’t beat her. He had all sorts of expectations of her, yes, but he had never beaten her and, as far as I could tell, wasn’t likely to choose to do so. All the times he yelled at her, he never once raised a hand. Not even to scare her. At least she had that going for her. I didn’t. I had been beaten countless times as a child and somehow, I had gotten myself into a situation where I was getting beaten again.

  How stupid of me. Lilly would laugh if she knew. She would make fun of me till the day I died because of it.

  I looked away, suddenly feeling the weight of misery in the corners of my mouth.

  Ethel’s hand landed on mine. She caressed the skin of my flesh with her thumb, gently, the way my mother sometimes did for me when I was feeling down years before.

  “You know, if I could turn myself into a man and keep you away from him, I would do it. Right away. The second we landed I would take you and we would go as far as we can get from Northridge. To hell with our suitcases.”

  I found myself laughing as the taste of whisky in my mouth suddenly tripled in intensity. What did that mean?

  Ethel smiled at my laugh and caressed me swiftly on the cheek. Fast, so no one could see. “Tell you what, next week, we’ll make it all about getting you happy again. Would you like that?”

  Of course. Nobody had ever dedicated a whole week to making me happy before. Not even a whole day or a full hour. Ethel was the first. And the only.

  More whisky entered my mouth although I hadn’t put my plastic cup of whisky to it since she took the seat opposite me. I was aware I was developing a new emotion there and then and a new synaesthetic reaction to go with it… I just didn’t know what that emotion was.

  “What would you like to do?”

  Suddenly, Ethel was looking incredibly beautiful to me, and I already knew the answer to her question. It was my next move; I’d been thinking about it since I left Baker snoring in his seat like a man who hadn’t only just hit his wife and the plan for what I was going to do next was now clearer in my mind than ever. “Get Gigi all fixed up,” I told her. “I have an old Floridian cure which might be able to help her recover from bodily injuries faster. If she spends one night at my place, I could give it to her to drink and protect her from physical harm once and for all.”

  Ethel’s eyebrows moved upwards and she sounded terribly amused in my ears. “Did you pay a lot of money for that ‘cure’?”

  “A little bit. But the man who sold it to me said it could work miracles and would be worth every penny.”

  “Mm hmm. I’m sure he did.”

  Now I was hearing the sounds of doubt in my ears and I couldn’t help but smile. “You said we’ll make it all about getting me happy again. Didn’t you?”

  “I did... but…”

  “Please?”

  She sighed and little pink and gold sparkles exploded around the corners of her mesmerisingly dark eyes. “Oh all right, whatever makes you happy.”

  Whisky. Lots and lots of whisky spilled into my mouth like a whole barrel had toppled within it.

  What was it? Love? Could I really be feeling love in the way everybody else did?

  Me?

  Chapter 26

  21 July 1975, Monday

  “That is not possible,” Gigi said when we pitched my plan to her, just an hour after our husbands left for work the following Monday. She had been in the kitchen washing breakfast plates when we approached and began looming over her like large trees and her face had turned paler than it normally was when she heard it. “My husband would not approve of me not making dinner for him tonight.”

  “It’ll just be for one night,” Ethel said, enthusiastically, as if it were her idea. “Say I fell ill and need you to take care of Daniel, or something. I’ll pay you double! Come on, I’m sure he can grab himself a slice of pizza on the way home for just one night!”

  Gigi stared at Ethel, then at me and made me hear a whole lot of heavy overloaded trains chugging. Because I was no longer being chased out of the Ashlock home or because Ethel had never offered her anything quite as wonderful as double pay before? It was hard to tell just looking at her.

  “Why? Why do you care... all of a sudden.” She looked at Ethel when saying this, not me, with grey lines of defensiveness running down the front of her face like bars of a jail cell.

  “It was my idea,” I said. “Because, turns out, I’m not all that different from you. And maybe, if I help you get stronger, I’ll also be helping myself get stronger.” I smiled. And I meant it.

  Gigi turned to me with slightly widened eyes and the echoey hollow sound of silence began bellowing in my ears—a sound that told me the human being I was looking at was feeling pity.

  I had gotten myself so low, I was now deserving of Gigi’s pity.

  “Oh, just say yes, Gigi,” Ethel said. “I’ll pay you triple.”

  The offer of cash did
what empathy failed to do. A harp sounded in my ear, seconds before Gigi said yes.

  I had dinner at Ethel’s that night, in her dining room with her and The Marshmallow Man. Gigi had dinner all by herself in the kitchen, which was where she took all of her meals when on the job, then followed me back to Baker’s house when she was done washing the dishes and tidying up both the kitchen and dining room.

  I set her up in Ariel’s girly, pink and white bedroom and told her to call for me when she had showered and gotten herself into the pyjama dress I laid out on the bed for her. When she did just that, I knocked, went in, made her lie down on the bed, then handed her the glass of slightly cloudy, transparent liquid I’d prepared for the occasion.

  “It’s the cure,” I said when she stared at it in a manner that made me hear the chugging of that overloaded train again. “Drink it, go to sleep and all your bruises will be gone from then on. That’s what the man who sold it to me said.”

  “Sandeces,” Gigi muttered in response but smiled politely soon after and drank up as I ordered, clearly thinking I wouldn’t have known she just said it was all just nonsense.

  I didn’t call her out for it either. It didn’t matter to me what she thought of it all, so long she drank up anyway.

  And she did. She cleared out every last drop then set the cup down on a side table as murky green splotches began dripping down her face while it curled up in a grimace. “It tastes very weird,” she said but licked stray drops of the liquid away from her lips anyway.

  I laughed because I thought it amusing that you could get a person to mute every last bit of their survival instincts for just a little bit of money. “Can I ask you something?” I asked when I was done being amused. “Before you go to sleep?”

  “You can ask, but I can’t guarantee I’ll know the answer.”