Our New Normal

by Colleen Faulkner

  “I scanned the photos on to my computer last year, Dad. I made an album for you for your birthday. We had a big party.” I’ve removed “remember?” from my vocabulary with him because it makes both of us feel bad. He doesn’t remember.

  “And you’ve got my pictures on there?” He taps my laptop screen as if he’s not entirely sure what it is.

  “I sure do.” I look up at him.

  He’s dressed in spanking-new pjs and a robe because none of their clothes, except what he was wearing, survived the fire. What wasn’t damaged by fire or water was beyond rescue because of the smoke. I took Mom to Freeport yesterday while Dad stayed home with Oscar and Hazel. Mom had a field day at the L.L.Bean store. I haven’t seen her that chipper in weeks. The woman loves her Bean clothing, which I find interesting because she’s also a pearls woman.

  “You said you ran a dispensary in Saigon?” I ask Dad, hoping to get him to tell me more.

  He nods slowly, his gaze not focusing on the laptop screen. His mind seems far away. Back in Saigon, maybe. “Medicine came in, we kept track of it. Guarded it. Stored it, shipped it out. Had a little clinic there, too. For GIs.” He sits back on the couch. “Know what affliction I treated the most?”

  “No, what?”

  These evening hours spent with my father, looking at photos, has been an amazing gift. Over the last few months, I’ve felt as if I was losing him. Losing my connection with him because he can’t remember any of the things that once connected us. But looking at his old photos, they have, in a way, brought my father back to me. Photos from his childhood, medical school days and Vietnam, and then the ones before he and Mom had me and then Beth, they’ve allowed me to relate to him, through them, through his memories. They’ve reminded him of who he was before he was my dad. I think they remind him of who he used to be, too.

  “What did you treat most of the GIs for in Saigon?” I prod when he seems to have lost his train of thought.

  “Gonorrhea.”

  I blink. Of all the things he might have said, that was not an answer I had anticipated. I guess I was expecting him to say gunshot wounds. Which wouldn’t have made sense because there wasn’t fighting going on in Saigon when he was there. “Gonorrhea?” I echo.

  “A sexually transmitted disease. Treat it with penicillin.”

  I want to tell him I know what gonorrhea is, but I don’t want to interrupt his train of thought. I do it too many times, and he’ll want his iPad so he can play Candy Crush.

  “Houses of ill repute,” he goes on. “Couldn’t keep the boys out of ’em. The soldiers. Not even after they came in for treatment. Be right back the next month. Knew when they’d gotten paid by the number of boys in my clinic with pain when they urinated. Or discharge.” He shakes his head. “They always came in to see the doc when they were pissing green.”

  I hear Oscar snigger and look up to see him standing in the family room doorway.

  We make eye contact and share a moment of amusement. Dad would never have said “piss” in front of me if he was himself. Oscar keeps teasing me that he likes this new version of my dad.

  “I’m making popcorn,” Oscar announces to the room. “Anyone want some?”

  I look to my father. “Dad, you want popcorn?”

  He shakes his head. He’s studying the photo of himself as if he’s trying to figure out something.

  “Mom, popcorn?” I call over the sound of the TV. They listen to it so loud that Oscar ordered wireless headphones and paid eight dollars for overnight delivery so he could hear his new TV and not my parents’ in the family room. “Mom?”

  “No thank you.” She doesn’t look up. She’s watching something on BBC. A British mystery, I think.

  I look back at Oscar. “No popcorn for us, but I’d like some tea. Peppermint.”

  He points at me. “I can do that.”

  I return my attention to my computer screen and bring up the next photo. It’s another from Vietnam. A group of young men standing outside a tent in what appears to be a field camp. One corner of the photo has a jagged line; it was probably torn and I taped it before scanning it. The only man I recognize is my father. He looks thin, and his eyes, beneath the helmet, look dark. Empty. “Who’s in this photo, Dad?”

  He squints. “Don’t know anyone there.”

  “Sure you do. That’s you, isn’t it?” I point to the officer I know is him.

  He leans closer, studying the photo. He pushes the bridge of his glasses back onto his nose and sits up again. “No. That’s not me.”

  “I think it is.”

  He picks up his iPad off the coffee table. Turns it on.

  I’ve been dismissed. I consider bringing up another photo, trying to engage him again. I decide against it. I can tell he’s tired. He and Mom will probably go to bed soon. Mom wasn’t happy about having to sleep with him, but we have a king-sized bed in the room, so I know very well she’s comfortable. And someone needs to keep an eye on him at night so he doesn’t burn my house down, too.

  I close my computer and get up, leaving my dad to crush brightly colored candies on the iPad screen. I kiss him on top of his bald head as I walk away, absently wondering what he’s done with his knit cap. He was wearing it earlier. I hope it’s not in the toilet. He’s taken to flushing things. I think he likes to see them disappear.

  I find Oscar in the kitchen pouring avocado oil into a pot on the stove. Even though we have microwave popcorn in the pantry, he likes to make it “old school.” He’s turned on the electric water kettle for me. I get a mug and then retrieve a peppermint teabag from a mason jar on the counter. While I wait for my water to boil, I go over to stand near the stove. “How was your day?” I ask, leaning against the counter, crossing my arms over my cozy flannel shirt. It’s been bitterly cold for days now, below zero at night.

  “Okay. Pretty light day. A couple of fender benders. Two cases of flu. A broken arm. An old lady with DTs. She ran out of her medicine.” He smiles. “Easy peasy.”

  I look up at him, making eye contact. Our weekend away wasn’t even two weeks ago, but it seems like two years. The house fire, my parents moving in, it’s been pretty overwhelming. For all of us. And Oscar has been a good sport. Even if he did, on impulse, go out and buy a forty-six-inch TV.

  Oscar nods in the general direction of the family room. “Sounded like you and your dad were having a good time in there.”

  “We were. I’m so glad you thought of his photos. Of looking at them with him. It’s been—” My voice catches in my throat. “Nice,” I finish weakly.

  Oscar takes my hand, squeezes it, and then lets go to add the popcorn kernels to the hot oil in the pan. “The ones from Vietnam are pretty amazing. I know I’ve seen them before, but I guess I didn’t really look at them. I started reading about the area where he was posted his last six months. That’s the general area the movie Hamburger Hill was supposed to take place.”

  The water whistles and clicks off. I just stand there. “Hazel go to bed?”

  “I think so. She watched a little TV with me while you were sorting your parents’ clothes, but she was drifting off to sleep. Dropped her cell phone on the floor.” He grins. “She moved the fastest I’ve seen her in weeks, trying to get to it before I did. Didn’t want me to see that the mysterious Jack was texting her, I suspect.”

  A popcorn kernel pops in the pot and I hear my mother telling my father something. I can’t make out what over the blast of the TV.

  I shrug. The entire pregnancy I’ve been caught between truly feeling for her when it’s come to the changes in her body and wanting to say she should have thought about the havoc pregnancy would wreak on her one-hundred-and-thirty-pound body before she had unprotected sex. “She’s thirty-nine weeks. She probably is tired. I’ll go up and check on her after I make my tea.”

  He rattles the pot on the stove and more kernels of popcorn burst. “You know I’m proud of you, Liv.”

  “How so?” I look at him, suddenly realizing how tired I am. After
I finish my tea, I’m heading to bed. I hope I can convince Oscar to come with me. Not for sex. I’m definitely too tired for that, but it would be nice to rest my head on his chest and talk for a few minutes in the quiet darkness of our bedroom.

  “I know this isn’t what you . . . what we wanted for Hazel. For our first grand, but you’ve really been there for her.” He reaches out to me and wraps one arm around my waist. “I see the little things you do: rub her feet, buy the kind of sorbet she likes, run upstairs to get her coat so she doesn’t have to take the stairs again.” He pulls me to him and kisses my temple.

  I lean against him. “I feel like a chapter in my life is ending. I’m not going to have a little girl anymore. Our daughter is going to be a mother.”

  “And we’re going to be grandparents.” He sounds hopeful and excited. All the things I’m not.

  “You know,” I say softly, “I haven’t changed my mind. I still think she should put the baby up for adoption.”

  He sighs and strokes my back. “I know. But you’ll feel different after he’s born.”

  I lay my head on his shoulder, feeling as worn-out as I imagine I would be if I were the one thirty-nine weeks pregnant. “I don’t think you understand what—”

  A crash comes from the living room.

  “Ed!” my mother cries.

  I let go of Oscar. We both run for the living room. As I round the corner, the smell of freshly popped popcorn fills my nostrils. And then this chapter of my life ends sooner than I expected.

  30

  Hazel

  I take a deep breath and sink under the surface of the warm bathwater. I close my eyes and try to imagine the weightlessness Charlie must feel tumbling around in my amniotic fluid. I’m hiding here in the bathroom from Gran and Mom and Dad because all they do is watch me. Like they think any minute Charlie is just going to fall out of my V. I need a break from all of them. I just need some time to wrap my head around Granddad kicking the bucket like that.

  I knew it would happen someday. Because we all die. We get old before it happens if we’re lucky, but we all die. But this isn’t how I expected it to end.

  I was just drifting off to sleep, still in my clothes, when I heard the sound of the coffee table crash over. I was holding my cell phone, waiting for Jack to text me back about Saturday. Turns out I couldn’t meet him at the movies Saturday because I had to go to a funeral.

  I didn’t have a dress to wear. Black or otherwise. Mom said I could just wear my yoga pants and her navy-blue sweater, but I wanted to wear black. I threw such a fit that Aunt Beth took me all the way down to Brunswick to Target because I found they had black maternity dresses and tights. I end up having to wear ankle boots instead of my knee-high boots because my calves are too swollen to zip them up.

  I come out of the bathwater gasping for air. As I come up, it occurs to me that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to hold my breath that long. What if it was depriving Charlie of oxygen? What if he’ll be born brain-dead now?

  It doesn’t sound like a thing, but I decide not to do it again, just to be on the safe side.

  I run my hand over my belly that’s way bigger than a basketball now. It’s a beach ball. I run my finger down the weird little line that runs from my belly button to my pubes.

  Which I can’t see anymore.

  I lie back with my head on a rolled-up towel and close my eyes again. The whole week has been surreal.

  I like that word. It means to have the qualities of surrealism, which was an art that was supposed to demonstrate things that were going on in the subconscious mind. Bizarre stuff. Like the paintings Dalí and Magritte did with the melty watches and stuff. But my favorite surrealistic artist is Frida Kahlo. I have a T-shirt in my Amazon cart that has one of her paintings on it with her sitting at a dining room table with a skeleton and a deer. I also have disposable boob pads and this cute baby onesie with elephants on it in my cart. Without a job, I don’t know how I’ll buy either. If Granddad was alive, I bet he would buy the T-shirt and the onesie for me. He and Gran have an Amazon account. He used to let me put things in the cart when Gran wasn’t paying attention and he’d hit “Place your order” for me. When boxes arrived, Gran would complain and say she was going to return the stuff, but she never did.

  Guess you can’t have an Amazon account if you’re dead.

  I sniff and try not to cry. Because all I do is cry.

  I can’t believe Granddad died. Of a stroke, of all things. He didn’t die crossing the street in his boxer shorts, he didn’t die mowing his lawn, even the time his bathrobe tie got caught in the mower blades. He didn’t even die when he set his house on fire.

  He died of a stroke. He stood up in our family room and then he fell onto the coffee table and upended it. Landed right on his iPad. Candy Crush was still playing when I ran downstairs to see what happened. Granddad had a blood clot in his brain and oxygen got cut off, which kills your brain. They tried to save him anyway, which I don’t get because I know he didn’t want to come back to life paralyzed or a vegetable or whatever. I don’t even think he wanted to be alive the last six months, because a lot of his brain seemed dead already. And he knew it. I could see it in his eyes when he’d ask me for a fork to eat his eggs, but the word rake would come out of his mouth.

  When I came downstairs, Dad was laying him out on the floor in front of the couch. Granddad’s robe was pulled up and he was missing the beanie he likes to wear in the house to keep his bald head warm. His glasses were lying halfway across the room.

  Dad started CPR.

  Mom called 911.

  Gran stood there in her bathrobe just staring at Granddad. Her face was red, but she wasn’t crying. I was crying hard enough for both of us.

  Charlie does the weird turn thing he does in my belly and I hold on to him with both my hands. He’s getting ready to come out. Today, at Dr. Gallagher’s, I had to let her examine me. I was two centimeters dilated. Yesterday was my due date. She said I could go into labor any day now, but not to be worried if it’s another week.

  I try not to think about labor. About how much I know it’s going to hurt. I try not to think about what it’s going to be like trying to take care of another human being that’s totally dependent on you. I just think about how cute Charlie is going to be. About how much he’s going to love me.

  Jack and I were talking about that last night. Texting. Things are heating up with Jack. Just thinking about him makes my face feel hot. He’s been so nice to me. Way nicer than Tyler ever was and I haven’t even had sex with Jack. Not that I think he’d even want to have sex with me like this. But we have kissed. Real kissing and just thinking about it makes my face warm. I like him. Like, really like him. And we have so much more in common than Ty and I did.

  There’s a knock on the bathroom door and I close my eyes. “Yes?”

  The door opens and I open my eyes as Mom sticks her head in the door.

  “Mom!” I say, covered my naked boobs that are waay bigger than they were before I got pregnant. “I’m trying to take a bath.”

  “I’m not looking.” She was looking, but now she turns her head and looks toward the sink. “I hate to tell you, dear, but your modesty is going to go out the window once you go into labor. After a while you won’t care if the birth center janitor wants to have a peek at your cervix.”

  “Mom,” I groan. “Is that what you busted into the bathroom to tell me? That I should let a janitor see my V?”

  She laughs, which makes me mad.

  “It was not. I came to tell you that Aunt Beth is coming for dinner, but we’re going to eat as soon as your dad gets home because Beth can’t stay. She has a hot date.” She looks at me and raises her eyebrows in a totally exaggerated way.

  “Mom!” I cover my boobs with my hands. “Get out.”

  “May as well get over that, too,” she tells me as she backs out the door. “Everyone in town is going to see those in one place or another.”

  “I’m not going to breast-fee
d in public.”

  “No? That baby cries, you’ll stick your nipple in his mouth in line at the grocery store just to shut him up.”

  She closes the door before I can say anything. I take a big breath and slip under the water.

  31

  Liv

  I stand outside Hazel’s room at the birth center, holding a vanilla milk shake in one hand, and a bag with a banana, a cookie, and a salad in it in the other. The nurse midwife is doing a postpartum check. I took the opportunity to step out and catch my breath. I’m tired and sad and happy. The last hours are a blur.

  I’ve always found it interesting how a woman going into labor is depicted in movies. Often the scenes are played comically, with the expectant father running around the house frantically looking for his keys, while the mother-to-be stands patiently, looking gorgeous, at the front door, car keys dangling from her finger. I haven’t seen any movies with teenagers in labor, although I think about the movie Juno that I watched with Hazel and the scene that follows the character Juno giving birth. I thought the actress did a good job depicting what a woman feels and looks like after twelve to eighteen hours of labor.

  I didn’t expect any of the comical nor the frantic behavior when Hazel went into labor, and there wasn’t any. She woke me up at about four in the morning, trying not to cry, telling me she’d been having regular contractions since midnight. We were careful not to wake up the household. I didn’t want the added confusion that would come from my husband and mother. Hazel didn’t want their advice. So I made tea and walked around the house with Hazel. I rubbed her feet. I brought her a cold, wet washcloth when she felt nauseated. In the morning, I convinced Oscar to go to work, at least for a few hours. Hazel had already decided I would be in the room when she delivered, but she didn’t want her father or her grandmother, which I completely agreed with. My mother kept herself busy sorting through my father’s clothes and other belongings to donate them. Hazel’s water broke at noon and I calmly drove her to the birth center and left my mother in the waiting room with my dad’s iPad.