A Piece Of Normal

by Maddie Dawson

  Kendall is asking loudly if the corn for the tostadas is organic or not, and whether the mesclun greens in the salad were grown locally or were imported. And are the avocadoes fresh and really, really ripe without being overripe? Is the lettuce hydroponic?

  Alex says in a low voice, "Does your friend have a volume control button, by any chance?"

  "No," I say. "I think we're just going to have to muzzle her."

  "It might be a challenge, but I think the two of us could take her down," he says, leaning very close so Kendall can't hear him. "And I bet some other people in line would be willing to help out. And possibly your ex-husband, the poor guy."

  "Well. . ."

  "I didn't mean it like that. He's probably not a poor guy at all. He's a rat. I'm sure that whatever he did to you in the divorce agreement made him deserve your fixing him up with her."

  I laugh. Alex not only has very nice eyes but he also has straight sandy-colored hair that flops into his eyes in a very pleasing, school-boyish kind of way. He's wearing a blue knit shirt, khakis, and boat shoes. Obviously not what you'd call a working man. Probably a Yalie, and probably too young for me—not that I'm in the market, but you never know. Lately I notice these things. "Actually," I say, "it's crazy, isn't it, but I was just trying to be nice."

  "Yes, but to which one of them? She looks like she could be a handful." We both listen as Kendall delivers a lecture on genetically engineered corn to the order taker.

  "He's kind of a handful, too. I figured it could work."

  "Hmm," Alex says. He stands back and smiles at me, as if we are old friends and I won't mind anything he has to say. "So, if you can stand any more personal questions, what exactly did you do to your hair that made that knit cap seem like a good idea? And if you say chemotherapy, I'm going to go kill myself."

  I laugh. "No, not chemotherapy. I turned it orange. Part of it orange, and then in trying to correct it, I ended up with yellow gold and orange."

  "Ooh, what shade of orange? Tangerines, orangutans, or...?"

  "More your Cheetos family. With spots here and there that might look like neon gold. Some butter yellow—butter that's been sitting out in the sun."

  "Ah. Interesting. Any overripe banana color, too?"

  "Oh, yeah. Mostly my bangs are that color."

  He laughs. "Yeah, been there, actually. And when I went to correct it, the whole hair got a greenish tint to it."

  I look at his hair, which is a very sane color.

  He brushes it out of his eyes. "Not recently," he says, seeing me look. "Back in the day. I had a band, so it was required."

  I want to ask him if he was by chance a Morbid Gullet, but just then it's my turn to order—after Kendall, the order takers are practically shouting for people in line to make up their minds quickly—so I order pita bread with hummus because I think that will be easy for them to make. By the time I finish placing my order, Kendall has sashayed over to the window and found us a table and is practically jumping up and down waving at me to come over, so I have to go. I turn and smile at Alex and say, "Well, thanks. And have a good day."

  "Hey, you too," he says. He leans in close and says in a low voice, "And if you see your ex, tell him people in line today think he deserves a medal for sticking it out with her until eight-thirty. You know?"

  When I get to the table, Kendall says in a grumpy voice, "All right. I've decided to forgive you. I'm sorry I'm being a pain."

  "It's okay," I say.

  "I don't know why I get so mad," she says. "I guess I just had my hopes up too high. But I'm over it."

  I clean a little bit of refried beans off the table with the corner of my napkin. "It's okay," I say again. "So... how have you been since the horrible date?"

  She's launched into a story about her housecats when my cell phone rings, and wouldn't you know, it's Teddy. At first I think I won't pick it up, but what if it's something about Simon? So I try to put my hand around the phone so Kendall won't hear Teddy's voice. But of course he talks so loudly that she can hear perfectly well that he's asking me to meet him somewhere for lunch, and then, when I say I can't come, he tells me he'll pick up something for dinner, if I want. He's willing to barbecue tonight. I get him off the phone as quickly as I can and look up to see Kendall fixing me with her meanest stare.

  "Oh, this is just unbelievable," she says. "Un-fucking-believable! And you can sit there with a straight face and tell me he's not still hung up on you?"

  I wish I could explain to her that this is just how he is: he attaches. It's not me he wants. Really. Win him over, and you've got him for life. He'll transfer this affection and all his complaints and his noon check-in phone calls to somebody else. He's ready. Convince him that he's lovable, and he'll be barbecuing at your house later tonight.

  She stands up, her eyes looking dangerously glittery, something between playful and Mount Vesuvius. She waves across the room. "Oh, Alex! Yoohoo! Alex! Isn't that your name? You're not going to believe this! Come here!"

  "Don't," I say.

  "No, he should join us anyway." She looks down at me, speaking in a low voice for once but smiling a fake pageant-y smile. Maybe she really was a beauty queen, I think. "I think he likes you. He'd be good for you, I think. Oh, Alex! Alex! Yoo-hoo!"

  I don't look to see if he's coming over. Instead, I feel myself get up, as though I'm on automatic pilot. I sort of glide to my feet in one fluid motion, sling my purse over my shoulder, and pick up my lunch tray. At first I can't believe I'm doing this—I think maybe I'm going to throw out my trash and then possibly go back and sit down across from her again—but then, well, something takes over and I just. . . don't. I throw out the trash and keep on walking—out the door, away into the warmth of the afternoon.

  14

  You know what's nice about being an advice columnist—even a non-edgy one whose boss is disappointed in her? You get really good at giving yourself little pep talks, as if somehow the letters to others are just practice for the real business: keeping yourself in line.

  For the next few days, I walk around wondering what I'd advise a person who wrote:

  Dear Lily,

  My sister, who has moved back in with me after not talking to me for a whole decade and who doesn't say how long she is staying, insists on sleeping in my bed and trying to improve me, when anyone can see that she's the one who needs improving. Also, she's messy and leaves her clothes all over the place and then laughs at me when I get mad about it and says that I am too anal-retentive and should loosen up. Also she talks, talks, talks when I need to go to sleep. Please tell me what to do.

  P.S. She is really, really good with my kid, who thinks she possibly hung the moon.

  Sometimes I feel myself saying to this mythical letter writer: "Breathe. Take things one at a time and not in large chunks. Try to hold the big picture in your head. If her clothes on the floor bother you, don't get into a fight with her, but talk to her about how it makes you feel and then let it go. Learn to enjoy the bigger moments between you, the fact that you are forging a relationship that had been pronounced dead."

  Still, despite everything, I have trouble following my own advice.

  After Dana has been there for three days, I come home, for instance, to find her rearranging the furniture in the living room. She's got one of the couches pushed out into the hall and upended. When she sees me standing at the door, all she says is, "Oh, hi. Will you help me lug this outside, and then let's go get some beanbag chairs tomorrow, okay? I think this room needs something casual. It's too formal in here with all these stupid couches."

  "I don't like beanbag chairs," I say. "They crackle under people's butts."

  She comes over and puts her arms around me and whispers, "No. What you don't like is change. The butt-crackling is a whole other issue we won't go into now."

  "I liked that couch, as a matter of fact," I say. "Since when do you get to come in here and change everything around to suit yourself?"

  "It's my house, too," she says o
ver her shoulder, and heads upstairs. I think she's mad, but in fact, it turns out she's just gone to get a lava lamp that she happened to bring with her from Texas. A lava lamp! She puts it on the table where our mother's favorite philodendron—"Phil"—had sat. The philodendron is sent out to bake on the back porch.

  "There," she says, standing back and regarding the place with a satisfied look on her face.

  "You know he'll die there," I tell her.

  "He?" she says, and laughs. "Last time I checked, plants were still considered inanimate."

  "Phil was Momma's. I'd think you'd want to help him live just because of that," I say, and she laughs as she goes upstairs. I bring Phil back inside, remove his dead leaves, and put him back in his place in the living room. Then I unplug the lava lamp and put it in the corner of the room, behind a chair. I am sorry, but I cannot tolerate a lava lamp in full view, and I will tell Dana that when she comes downstairs.

  But when she comes back, she's dressed up in a white tank top, jeans, and high-heeled sandals. She has her hair down and curly, and her eyes are ringed in mascara. Her bag is slung across her shoulder. This is a surprise. She's mostly seemed happy just to sit on the porch chatting with Teddy and me until far after the time I'm ready for us to go inside to bed. Three days, and obviously we're starting a new chapter.

  Before I can think, I say, "Where are you going?"

  She rolls her eyes. "Gee, I'm having a déjà vu all over again. Isn't this where we left off ten years ago?"

  "Okay. Forget it."

  She clicks herself over to the fridge, takes out a liter of Coke, and drinks straight from the bottle. "No, no, I'll tell you so you won't worry, you little worry monkey, you. Today I was downtown and I met this guy I used to go out with—Seth Tomlinson. Remember him? He was on the swim team, so he had really big muscles, and he was really good at smashing beer cans into his head?"

  "Uh, vaguely."

  "See, it blows my mind that you didn't keep up with anybody after I left. I would have thought you'd have been interested in what happened to all those people who hung out here all the time."

  "Did you keep up with them?"

  "Well... that was different. I was moving on."

  "I moved on, too. Moved on to the point where I didn't have to keep track of the town juvenile delinquents anymore."

  She laughs a little. "Yeah, I suppose. Well, anyway, Seth Tomlinson became a cop. And we're going out so he can fill me in on what everybody's doing these days. And maybe help me find a job."

  "You're getting a job?"

  "Well, duh!" She taps me on the top of the head as she passes by me. "I have to work, don't I? By the way, I saw what you did with my lava lamp, and I just want to say: this fight is not over."

  As soon as she's gone, I move the couch from the hall back to where it was before. The room looks so much better this way—nice and elegant and finished.

  ***

  “What in the world is going on?" says Gracie on the telephone later that evening. "Are these rumors I hear true—Dana's back?"

  "Yup. Despite our predictions, I have a sister on the premises," I tell her.

  "Wow! And is she a new-and-improved version of herself?"

  I laugh. "Well, hard to say. She's not Goth anymore, but she talks all the time, and she doesn't pick up her clothes, and she wonders why I didn't throw out the couches, and she has put a lava lamp in the living room. Oh, and she says the deal between us is that I get to make her feel guilty for leaving, but she gets to criticize me for staying. Which she does nearly nonstop."

  "Wow. Isn't family just a wonderful thing?" says Gracie.

  "You should come and see her," I say.

  "How does your hair look, by the way?"

  "Oh, the same. I'm trying to think of what to try next. Meanwhile, I'm buying hats and trying to appear eccentric in public. You really should come and see her."

  She still doesn't answer that. "Did you try the Indian scarves?"

  "Um..."

  "You didn't."

  "They didn't look right on me. By the way, why don't you come over for dinner tomorrow night? Teddy's here every night cooking yummy stuff on the grill—yummy stuff that Dana eats about two half bites of and then pushes around on her plate—so we could use a real eater."

  "You know, I think I have to take a pass on that. Thanks for the invite, but I'd have to put on full armor, I think, to be in the same vicinity as Dana, and I haven't had my armor polished lately."

  This feels so weird. Gracie wasn't around, of course, during my two-year ordeal with Dana after our parents died. She was off in Italy on that fellowship, and she didn't come back home until Dana had already flown the coop. She didn't even see the worst of it—the parade of guys and the weird costumes (the dog collars and such), the beer cans on the lawn, the naked teenagers swimming off the beach in our backyard—so I'm not sure just where this animosity between the two of them has come from. I figure it must have started up when I was at college and they were both rivals for my mother's attention. I can just see my mother playing them off against each other, like fifth-grade girls: You're my best friend today, and she's my best friend tomorrow. My mother could be so fifth grade.

  "Okay," I say to Gracie. "I understand."

  "But you," she says before we hang up. "Are you really okay with everything?"

  "Sure. She's just a little needy. And, I don't know, it's good to see her and everything, but she's..."

  Gracie laughs a little. "I know."

  "I mean, I love her and I want her to be happy, but she's just got this weird energy about her. She never settles down. And she won't tell me where she's been all this time. I feel like I spend my whole time trying to figure her out. It's exhausting."

  "Yep. That's our Dana."

  "Um, you don't have room for a lava lamp, by any chance, do you?" I say.

  "Please. You've seen this place. I can't even fit another typewriter ribbon in here."

  "Gracie, get real. They don't even make typewriter ribbons anymore."

  "But if they did, I still couldn't fit one here. And I'm definitely not taking your castoff lava lamp."

  ***

  Much later, I'm scrubbing the sink for the night and resetting the kitchen clock and thinking I could get a much-needed head start on sleep before Dana comes home, when I hear the truck door slam, and then there she is, her high heels clicking on the tile floor. "Hi," she says and leans in the doorway, looking tired. "Why oh why did I bother to wear these goddamn shoes? Can you just tell me that? Huh?" She pries off the heels and then, groaning, sinks down into the armchair and rubs her feet. I'm wiping down the counters and watching her out of the corner of my eye. Her hair's all messed up, and her makeup is smudged under her eyes.

  "How was your date?"

  She scowls, kneading her toes. "It wasn't a date like you're thinking 'date.' He's engaged to a woman disc jockey in New York. This was just a get-reacquainted-with-Branford session."

  "Oh. Did you know that when you went?"

  "Yes, I knew that when I went. Jeez."

  "So... how was your get-reacquainted-with-Branford session?"

  "Fine." She sighs and flings herself backward, letting her head loll back across the arm of the chair. "I guess it's all fine. He told me all about everybody I used to know here. A lot of the Gothies are still here, but they're all pretty mainstream. And that girl, Lainie, who used to hang out here—the one who thought you were so cute—she's a fashion designer in New York. And a guy named Joey fell out of a window at college and is now paralyzed. Couple people got married. You know." She rubs her heel, hard. "But—well, he didn't know the thing about Thor. I had to tell him, and that was hard."

  "Thor, your old boyfriend from the Morbid Gullets?" I say. Obviously she doesn't remember that she hasn't told me the thing about Thor. "What happened to him? It wasn't a razor blade accident, was it?"

  She looks over at me as if I've just said the most insensitive thing possible. "If that's what you want to call it. The cop
s called it a suicide."

  My hairline feels as though a piece of ice has just melted on it. "He committed suicide? Oh, no! Oh, that's terrible. I liked him so much. Were you there... I mean, when it happened?"

  "I left him, and that's when he did it," she says in a flat, dull voice. "Listen, I've just been talking way too much about it, and I'm kind of talked out. I don't want to think about it anymore."

  "Okay. Sure. I understand." I see the butter out on the counter, so I put it in the refrigerator and then stand there at the open refrigerator door, staring at the cold food and thinking about Thor.

  After a long silence, she says, "Do you know what I want to do right now?"

  I close the door to the fridge. "I'm almost scared to ask."

  "I want to go and dig in the sand."

  "You're kidding."

  "Yeah, will you come with me?" She sits up straight. "Please! And don't say it's too late. I really, really want us to just go sit down on the beach and dig in the sand together."

  I look at the clock. "It's nearly midnight, and I have to work tomorrow."

  "Come on. Please. We never really get to talk."

  I hesitate. "For fifteen minutes," I say. "And then I have to get some sleep."

  "Fifteen or sixteen," she teases me. "Maybe twenty, at the outside."

  ***

  The sand is shimmering in the moonlight, glowing almost white. We go walking across the cool, wet grass to the beach. There's a slight breeze that lifts my hair, and the air smells deliciously like salt and fog and the wet wood of the dock. I try to shake off the image of Thor.

  "God, would you believe a person could miss sand?" Dana is saying. "I missed sand. How dorky is that?" She flops down on the beach and starts digging so industriously it's as though she's going to start trucking piles of the stuff back to the house for later. I lower myself down beside her and kick off my shoes, staring at her in amazement; I could have used her skills during my digging months.

  I have a knot in my stomach. "When you first left," I say after a while, "I sat on this beach—almost right in this very spot—for days in a row, just digging holes. I couldn't do anything. I didn't even talk to anybody."