A Piece Of Normal

by Maddie Dawson

  "So, Lily. I didn't realize you had a sister," she says.

  "Yep. I do." I shuffle papers.

  "Listen," she says. "God, how can I say this? I've been just terrible to you, and I've been wanting to come and say I'm sorry, but I just didn't know how to do it. I don't blame you for walking out on me that day at Claire's. I mean, I was mad, but when I thought about it, I realized you were right. I was being obnoxious. And I'm sorry."

  "Well," I say. "I accept your apology. Thank you."

  She stretches out her legs and looks pleased with herself. "So, your sister has invited me to your little party."

  I want to say: Did she mention the part about how she's going to row you out on the bay, dump you overboard, and take your job? Instead I say, "Oh, how nice."

  She goes on for a moment about the wonderfulness of parties in the summertime, especially parties at somebody's beach house, and then she says, "So, I was sort of wondering... do you remember that guy Alex? From Claire's that day? He was talking to us in line?"

  "Oh, yeah."

  "Well, after you walked out that day—remember I was calling him over to our table? When you left he actually came, and he and I sat down and talked for a little while. He is so nice. And, well, he's the station manager at WingNut, which I was very surprised by. That's a very good station. I listen to it all the time, do you?"

  "No. I listen to Raffi all the time."

  She looks taken aback for a moment, then she laughs. "Oh, yeah, Raffi! You have a little boy, that's right. Anyway... so I was thinking, well, you know, I think I might try for Alex. And I just wanted you to know that, well, I kind of liked him, and since we sort of discovered him at the same time, I thought I'd tell you and make sure you wouldn't mind, you know, if I... well, if I started dating him."

  I stare at her. This is so icky. I mumble something to the effect that she certainly doesn't have to check with me. What kind of code does she subscribe to, anyway, one in which two women who talk to a guy on the same day have to check with each other before one of them dates the guy? Is this some sort of beauty pageant rule? Then it hits me, what she's really asking, one split second before she asks it: "So would you mind very much if I asked him to come with me to your party?"

  "Actually, this is kind of weird, really, but he's already been invited. Dana and I just saw him at Claire's, and Dana invited him. That woman is unstoppable."

  I see Kendall's face fall for a split second. Then she recovers and says how good it is that he's already coming. Maybe they can ride in together. "I really would like to go out with him, I think."

  Casey passes by my doorway, sticks his head in, and asks about the newest "Eeek!" column. I tell him it's wafting its way through cyberspace to him.

  As soon as he goes away, I say to Kendall, "Have you considered dating The Rooster? A little romantic fling could be just the thing to humanize him. I am not even joking; I promise you, the staff would put up a statue in your honor."

  She leans forward and says in a loud whisper, "Actually, the person somebody should be dating is our darling publisher, Lance. Did you know his family is like one of the richest families in New England? I read about them in a magazine. They're like the Bill Gates of Massachusetts or something. And his sister—I overhead him telling one of the salespeople—his sister is getting married this summer on Cape Cod to some super-rich guy she's been in love with since she was four years old or something. The whole clan is gathering. It's like two dynasties merging."

  "Well, isn't that the nicest thing?" I say, biting back a yawn. "It's so good when rich marries rich."

  "I just wish I'd met the love of my life when I was four years old," Kendall says. "Think of the time that would have saved me."

  I think of Maggie, who pretty much did that, just five years later is all. "It's not all you think it is," I tell her. "Sometimes people aren't fully formed yet when they're little kids, and you can't see the jerks they're hardwired to turn into, and then you're in for a bit of a shock."

  Which reminds me, I haven't talked to Maggie in days. I have to call her and tell her about the party. She'll be amazed we're giving one after all these years. Also, I need to hear how she's doing with Problem Husband, if he's truly sworn off sex with her altogether.

  Kendall is smiling at me. "So what you're saying is that maybe it's just as well that I'm meeting Alex now instead of when I was a kid. I can live with that. I just have to make up for lost time."

  I watch her as she walks away, flipping her hair over to the side and swaying in a girlish side-to-side way, and I think I really don't like her one bit. I wonder why I ever thought she and Teddy could be a pair. I must have been out of my mind.

  17

  Later that week, I get home from work one day to find Dana and Teddy sitting out on the porch having a beer together. Simon is running around the backyard on all fours, barking and growling, with a piece of paper in his mouth. I put my purse down on the island countertop and watch them. Dana calls over to Simon. He leaps up onto the porch, panting like a dog, and she takes the paper from his mouth. She reads the paper, makes her mouth into a perfect little O shape, and smiles at something Teddy is saying. Then she inserts the paper back into Simon's waiting mouth.

  Such a perfect little family moment out there: a couple and their puppy. I open the sliding door and step out onto the porch.

  "Hi, everybody," I say. Simon comes four-legging himself over to me and gets up on his knees and holds his hands in front of him in the doggie-begging position, pointing to the paper with his paw.

  "Ool-skay etter-lay," says Teddy as I reach over and take it. "Perhaps a little anxiety, I think. Regression to og-day ehavior-bay."

  Simon is panting, "School retter... school retter..."

  Sure enough, it's just your routine chatty little form letter from the superintendent of schools, inviting us to a kindergarten open house the first week in August, where we can have the opportunity, he says, to meet and get acquainted with Simon's new teacher, Renée Simone.

  I look down at Simon's big brown eyes. He's wagging the equivalent of his tail.

  "Are you excited?" I ask him, and he nods his head up and down.

  Dana says, "Ooh, shall we invite Renée Simone to the party, too?" To my shock, Teddy pretends to grab her around the neck and give her noogies. I can't believe what I'm seeing—Teddy? Giving noogies? And since when do they act this way with each other?

  "Today I caught Dana walking through the colony knocking on doors and inviting people to this mythical party we're apparently throwing," he says to me, by way of explanation. He's still got her head caught in the vise grip of his arm and is rubbing a circle onto the top of her head while she flails at him. "Now I gotta put some sense into her, one way or another."

  "Well," I say. "In her defense, the colony people had to get invited. They are the party. Did you invite Gracie?" I ask her.

  Teddy lets Dana go. Laughing, she sits upright and rubs her head, looking at him accusingly even while she's still laughing. "Ow, ow, ow, Teddy Kingsley. I'm going to get you for that."

  "I said, did you invite Gracie?"

  Dana hits Teddy on the arm, a cute, girlish imitation of a slap fight. Simon runs over and gets in between them, hitting them and letting out banshee yells.

  "Stop, stop," I say. "All of you, stop it."

  "That's right. This is only funny until somebody loses an eye," says Teddy. He pretends to brush himself off.

  "Oh, Lily!" Dana jumps up from the porch swing. "Guess what! I almost forgot. I went to the drugstore this afternoon and got lots of stuff for your hair. Tonight, girl, we are going to get your hair fixed up all beautiful. I bought all kinds of colors just so you could choose, but Teddy and I took a vote before you got here, and we both decided you should be a blonde."

  "A blonde?" I say, and then, "You went out and bought hair dye?"

  "Yep. You obviously have to do something. And we think you've got too far in the orange-yellow category to head back. At least that's what
we figured, didn't we, Teddy? Plus, you look sort of cute where your hair is yellow. I even called a hair color hotline, and they said blonde would be easy to get to from where you are right now. So tonight, after dinner—what do you say?"

  I don't know what to say.

  "We can touch up mine, too," she says. "We'll be the Bright Blond Brown sisters."

  "The bad Bright Blond Brown sisters," says Teddy. "Say that three times fast."

  "Dana," I say, "did you invite Gracie?"

  "For tonight's hair extravaganza? No."

  "For the party. Did you invite her to the party?"

  "Also negatory," she says.

  "We are absolutely not having this party without inviting Gracie."

  "No, we aren't," agrees Teddy. "Gracie is part of our lives here."

  "Okay," Dana says and sighs. "But could somebody else do the inviting? She'd never believe it if I invited her anyway. She'd think it was a mean trick and she'd never come. I doubt she'll come anyway, just knowing I'm here."

  I can't believe she's still competing with Gracie for my mother's affection.

  "She'll come. Of course she'll come," I say.

  ***

  Wisely, I have conditions that must be met before I can submit to another nonprofessional hair-coloring experience—without general anesthetic, that is.

  One, Teddy is not to be on the premises. Given his negative energy during the last hair fiasco, not to mention his tendency to bring up cancer statistics associated with hair dye, I feel his presence would make it impossible for me to have a good result.

  Two, I need Maggie to come over and stand next to Dana while she puts the stuff on my hair. She does not have to actively participate, given that she's a known coward, but I need her there to oversee the proceedings and prevent any sister-induced horrors.

  Three, we must have a public reading of the literature that comes with the hair-coloring materials, and if anyone feels the slightest bad vibe there, the merest hint that the product could backfire and isn't meant for the likes of me, we will go no further.

  Four, there must not be alcohol. No drinking until my hair color is secure.

  Five, Simon must go home with Teddy for the night. Anyone can see that this is not a scene that innocent children should witness.

  ***

  I have never been blond—just my boring brown and, more recently, of course, decorated with spots of gold, orange, and butter-left-out-in-the-sun yellow. But both Dana and Maggie insist I have the right complexion for it; I was somehow cheated of my rightful blond hair, they say. After all, Momma had it, and Dana got it, too. Through some genetic mistake, I inherited my father's dark hair and yet Momma's light skin color. This must be set right.

  Rule number four—the alcohol rule—gets broken immediately. We all need to drink because—well, how can you not, when something this huge is taking place? Dana makes us banana daiquiris, and Maggie puts on Hair Bleaching Music, which turns out to be anything by Blondie, and she turns it up full blast. They mix up the bowl of stuff in the kitchen, and Dana recites an incantation she claims she learned from a native woman in Hawaii.

  I sit on the kitchen stool as if it were a throne, a towel around my shoulders, while they hover over me like handmaidens. The test strand I make them do turns out a nice mellow golden blonde, just what you'd hope for. So they slather the stuff on the rest of my head. It is a great night, and I have that quivering frisson of excitement that you have sometimes when things are changing and you're being swept along by events like in a dream, but you know somehow that everything is going to turn out all right. The right people have shown up, and it's all going to be fine.

  Dana starts in with teasing Maggie about letting me slide into life inertia, as she calls it. "Lily hasn't so much as moved the saltshaker here in the whole time I've been gone," she says, which is becoming a resounding theme with her.

  I roll my eyes. "Don't start with the saltshaker again."

  "No, really, Maggie," Dana says. "Wouldn't you have thought she'd want to make this place her own by now? I mean, Momma is not coming back to yell at her if she repaints a wall or something. Hasn't it started to scare you how passive she is?"

  Maggie laughs and pats me on the shoulder. "Oh, Lily's just a status quo kind of gal," she says.

  "Well, I think our next project has to be painting these walls," Dana says. "I was thinking an orangey red for the kitchen. That is such a cool color, and think of how great it would look around the fireplace," she says. "It would pick up the colors in the bricks so fantastically."

  "I don't know," I say. The kitchen is a cream color now, with wallpaper along the wall near the table, picked out by my mother: little bluebells on a delicate green vine. It's okay-looking paper. I have looked at it for every meal since I was a little girl and have never thought much about it.

  "And the living room—I've been thinking that should be a deep blue," Dana says. "It's a fantasy I have—deep blue walls, like the place is an aquarium or something. With green couches and beanbag chairs, lots of pillows and plants... can't you just see it?"

  Well, I can't, frankly.

  I say, "Let's drink more banana daiquiris and leave the walls the color they are."

  So we drink and get to laughing hysterically over the silliest things. Maggie makes a batch of nachos with extra cheese and sour cream, because Mark, she says, won't let her eat them at home.

  "He won't let you eat them?" Dana says.

  "He worries that I might get fat, and then I wouldn't be the fabulous trophy wife he needs and counts on me to be," Maggie says, striking a pose, and somehow even this unbelievable piece of news seems hilarious tonight, and so then we all start telling Horrible Sexist Pig stories. Dana marches around the room with her chest thrust out, doing an imitation of Randy showing off his truck, always reaching down every few seconds to touch his privates. "He can't do anything without checking to make sure his precious dick is still where he left it," she says. "God knows it might fall off and start a life of its own, you know?"

  Then Maggie, who's been leaning over the nacho tray, eating them fast and furious, jumps up in the air and says, "Ooh! Listen to this. I've got my diaphragm in my purse—and don't say this is gross—but I need you to help me stick an ice pick in it and make a hole!"

  I start shaking my head. "Oh, Maggie, no..." but Dana pumps her fist in the air and yells, "Bring it on, sister! We'll stick a hole in anything tonight!... Uh, why are we doing this to a diaphragm, though? Just tell me that first."

  "I want a baby," Maggie tells her, "and Mark is undecided, so I read somewhere that one tiny pinprick can let in, like, enough sperm to create a small North American town."

  "She wants to trick him," I explain to Dana. "And now she wants us—"

  "Whoa," says my inebriated sister. "That is such a radical idea! Wow. You know, I totally support you, Maggie, because I want a baby, too. You know? Being here and hanging with Simon just makes me want to have somebody who's all mine."

  "See? That's it," Maggie says. "That's how it starts. Simon had that effect on me, too. Now I'm so obsessed with babies that the other day I found myself sobbing near the nursing pads in the drugstore. Sobbing. I'm not even sure what nursing pads are for, but I wanted to buy them and bring them home and set them around the house for good luck."

  "But I still think it's not a good idea, tricking Mark," I say. "He won't like it one bit."

  Maggie shrugs at Dana and tilts her head toward me. "Lily is the loyal opposition. But I think Mark secretly wants to be a father; he just can't make up his mind."

  "Like Willems with Dreena Sue," says Dana excitedly. "Willems didn't want a new baby; he has, like, eight kids from, like, eight different women, but then when the baby came, he was thrilled. Guys don't know what they want. I'll help you if you want, Maggie. Go get the thing and I'll get the ice pick."

  Right then, though, thank goodness, the timer goes off, and we all get busy rinsing my hair. In a matter of five minutes, complete with chanting and pr
ayer and much sloshing of water on the floor, my hair has become a dazzling Jean Harlow blond.

  No, seriously. I don't mind telling you that I look fantastic. Fantastic! I look like I was meant for this, like I've always been cool, even in high school. I run up to my room and put on a little bit of pink blusher and some lipstick and mascara—items I usually can't be bothered with—and while I'm there, I pose in front of the mirror, smiling, looking serious, and then I practice looking wicked.

  "Alex," I whisper to the mirror, and I'm only slightly drunk. "Come here."

  ***

  When I come back downstairs, Dana has decided that the three of us need to go skinny-dipping—something about sealing our Sisterhood of the Hair Dye, she says. I roll my eyes. She's really drunk now, I think.

  "Look at us, we're young and cool; we should go outside and live a little! Come on, you won't regret it, I promise!" she says. "It'll be one of those things you tell your grandchildren about." Her eyes are way too bright.

  Maggie and I look at each other doubtfully. Dana is already stripping down, stepping out of her denim shorts and heading out the sliding glass door, looking over her shoulder at us. "Come on!" she hisses. "We did the hair thing, we've danced, we've eaten, we've laughed, we've cried. Now, for God's sake, let's swim."

  Maggie shrugs. "You want to?"

  "I dunno."

  "We might as well. We can't let her go out there by herself. If she drowned, we'd never forgive ourselves."

  "I suppose. Okay, let's go. But I don't want to get salt water in my new hair color. I don't think Marilyn Monroe would have dared swim in the Sound with her blond hair. Even Madonna. You never see Madonna in the ocean, do you?"

  We go out into the cool night and to the darkness of the beach. I take off my sweatpants, T-shirt, and underwear, fold them up self-consciously, and put them on the sand. Maggie slips out of her gypsy skirt and peasant blouse. Dana's already in the water, splashing around, turning in circles, and then dipping underneath the water and coming up again and again, like a baby seal.