A Piece Of Normal

by Maddie Dawson

  Dana comes next, walking along between Maggie and Mark and wearing some kind of hippie-looking kimono with all kinds of embroidery and little mirrors and beads sewn on it. Her hair is down and spread across her shoulders. Maggie waves and comes over to embrace me, and Mark, wearing a business suit and dress shoes, of all things, heads over to where the waiters are getting prepared. He feels comfortable among the robots, I guess.

  After a while, Teddy comes along, holding onto Gracie's arm. Simon runs to meet them, and Teddy leans down and gives him a big hug. Dana goes flitting over to them and picks up Simon and twirls him around. I can see him asking her something, and she smiles and shakes her head and points to her belly. Sloane, the sergeant-at-arms, shows up next, looking grim. I see that Simon has attached himself to Dana's side. She looks over at me and gives a funny little wave and makes a "isn't this the craziest thing ever" face. I look away.

  Everybody seems startled as hell to see the waiters and the good china and the crystal all being set up on the beach. The staff has come to life now, scurrying around handing out glasses of wine and passing around trays of hors d'oeuvres—little scallops wrapped in bacon and stuffed mushrooms for the adults, triangles of grilled cheese for the kids. One of the waiters starts a bonfire and turns on a boom box playing Frank Sinatra music. We all stand around, huddled against the wind, talking in low, puzzled voices. Anginetta has sand in her shoes and almost starts grumbling about that, but then Joe Wiznowski leans down to her ear and points to Sloane, evidently reminding her of the decree, and she stops talking and looks up, embarrassed.

  I hear Virginia saying to someone in a defensive tone of voice, "I never realized he was all that ill. Who gets so sick and dies in a matter of a few weeks? We just saw him."

  I go over and tell her, "I did call you..." but she turns away. I know she must feel guilty.

  Bob Arterton is shaking his head and saying, "A helluva thing, drinking wine on the beach. It doesn't seem legal, does it? And look at all those clouds. We're going to have rainwater wine, yesirree."

  The kids—including the bad one, Bert's son Kyle—get into a rowdy game that involves running in circles and screaming, kicking up sand over near where the waiters are working on unearthing the clambake. I expect one of the automatons will turn and tell them to knock it off, but no one does. Finally, Bert groans and hands his mother his wineglass and goes over to speak to them. Kyle shouts something insulting to his father, and everyone looks at Sloane, whose job it is to assess penalties for this sort of thing. He dutifully picks himself up and goes over to talk to Kyle in a low, ominous voice, delivering the sentence of one hundred kisses.

  I hold my breath.

  Kyle says, "No way!"

  He's shown a piece of paper, no doubt a copy of Leon's decree. There's much arguing and pointing over there. I'm trying to talk to Krystal and Maggie, but I can't stop watching out of the corner of my eye.

  "You have to do it," Sloane says loudly. "One hundred kisses for your father. Come on, it won't kill you."

  Bert stands there, waiting. The party—if you can call it that—comes to a hush.

  Anginetta says, "Oh, this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. Leon Caswell was out of his mind."

  Sloane looks at her. "Mrs. Franzoni, you're next..." and everybody laughs.

  "I'm not kissing anybody. They can kiss my hind end, if they want," she says.

  A little scuffle breaks out between the kids just then, and Sloane steps in and takes Kyle by the arm and walks him over to Bert. For a moment, father and son just glower at each other. I can't bear to watch but can't look away, either. We all wait, holding our breath, to see if Kyle will kiss his father. Time seems to drag on, and then Kyle stomps away, up over the hill and toward his grandmother's house. Anginetta says, "Good God in heaven! Look what Leon brings out in people! What kind of asinine thing is this anyhow?" and follows close behind him.

  I can't bring myself to look at Krystal, so I look down at my glass of wine and feel my eyes fill with tears. This party is never going to work.

  ***

  Soon, the waiters—I've decided they're like the Oompa Loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory—start herding us over to eat. They hand out real china plates, fine silverware, and glasses with curvy stems, and for a while we all sit in a circle on the sand, picking apart lobsters, helping the children with their lobster crackers and picks. The old people get folding chairs, but the rest of us sprawl everywhere, concentrating on our food, watched over by these perfectly neutral waiters, who do little but step in to help, to fetch new napkins and more drawn butter, without being asked. It's like my party, I think, when no one could think of anything to say. Even with Leon giving explicit directions, still nobody will talk.

  Alex is sitting next to me on the sand, staring down at his plate. I wonder if he wishes he hadn't come. I can't imagine what he must think of us. I'm too miserable to look at him.

  Just then Dana comes and plops herself down on the other side of me. Simon is on my lap and I'm reaching around him, trying to liberate the claws of his lobster and hand-feed him the meat.

  She says to me, "I have to apologize to you."

  "I know, and I to you." I can feel her intensity. I feel that if I look in her eyes, I'll be tacitly approving of everything she's ever done. "Let's do it later. Unless you want to just say a quick 'I'm sorry' and be done with it."

  "No. I want to apologize beyond what Leon meant. I want a full-bore apology."

  I look up at her. "Let's not. Just leave it at a nonspecific 'I'm sorry,' shall we?"

  "No," she says, and sticks her chin up. She's got that intense Dana expression on her face, like when she's about to do something you're going to regret. I think, Oh boy, here we go.

  She puts her mouth close to my ear. "It's always going to be weird between you and me, isn't it? You're not going to get used to me and Teddy being together. I see that now. You won't even look at me."

  I try to rip the front claws off the lobster without using a nutcracker. I feel like prying it apart using only my bare hands. I start to say something, but then can't bring myself to talk. I can feel her eyes boring into the side of my head. Just stop, I think. Stop talking. Stop staring at me.

  "Will you please look at me, Lily? Could you do that? Do you hate me so much that you won't even look? I'm trying to tell you how I feel."

  I'm aware of the silence all around us. People turn in our direction, but of course she doesn't notice that kind of thing.

  "Keep it down," I whisper. "In fact, could we have this conversation another time?"

  "Leon said this was the time to talk about everything."

  "He meant everybody else," I say. "He didn't mean us."

  "No, I think he really meant us, and anyway, I'm tired of secrets. I am so tired of secrets that I just want to scream," she says. Before I can stop her, she gets to her feet. "Hey, while y'all are eating your lobsters, I have to tell you a secret about me. This is in honor of Leon, okay? I've done something really bad to my sister, and I didn't even know how bad it was. I mean, I've done a lot of bad to her in our lives together—running away when she was taking such good care of me was awful, but that was years ago, when I was just a kid." She puts her hand on my shoulder, as if she wants to hold me in place. I can't bring myself to look up at everyone.

  "But now I've come back," she goes on, "and I've maybe done a worse thing. I've gotten involved with—well, the truth of it is, I fell in love with Teddy. Who, as you all know, she's not married to anymore, so I thought it would be okay." She laughs. "That's how dumb I am! I thought when you get divorced from somebody, you're... you know, like done caring about them. But I found out that was wrong." I feel her do a little curtsy. "Sometimes I think I don't get all the memos everybody else gets."

  I hear a little bit of laughter from the group, and I feel Gracie moving toward me, scooting closer to the circle. I just sit there, rooted to the spot. Everyone is looking at Dana with interest in their faces. I stare a
t my hands. "Will you please sit down?" I whisper.

  But she's relaxed now and into this. She could talk for the rest of the night. She laughs again. "I'm probably not telling y'all anything you don't already know. You've probably been talking about us," she says. "Oh, I remember the way y'all colony people are—you know everything about people almost before the people themselves know." There's another little tittering of laughter. "But—okay, here's the tough part to say. Teddy and I are gonna have a baby. Y'all knew that, too, didn't you? And that hurt Lily a lot, and she went away, 'cause maybe we didn't do everything the really careful way. And I'm just so sorry about that. I saw it as a good thing, embracing life, but sometimes I think I give myself a pass on a lot of things, calling it 'embracing life,' when it's really just doing what I want." She stops, takes in a breath. The sky, I realize, has suddenly slipped into dusk, and our faces are lit only by the fire. Everybody's looking at Dana. She runs her toe in the sand for a moment and then she says suddenly, loudly, "Leon was a big old crazy man, and he'd do anything for any of us, but. . . you know something?" Her tone changes, becomes outraged. "You know what? This whole thing is kind of bullshit, in a way. This apology thing. Somebody should go get Kyle and Anginetta and tell them to come back here and that they don't have to apologize or kiss anybody they don't want to kiss. They should be part of us even if they don't want to do what Leon said. We should be together tonight."

  Somebody—I think it's Bob Arterton—says, "That's right," and there's a slight commotion as one of the other Franzoni grandchildren—I realize I don't even know his name—gets up and goes off to fetch them.

  Everybody looks back at Dana. "Anyhow, that's what I wanted to say. I'm just sorry, is all. But I'm here to stay. I'm back home."

  She sits down. I hear a lot of murmuring. Gracie leans over and hugs her, and at first I think, don't hug her! Look at what she's doing to me.

  Virginia says, from across the circle, "Jesus Christ, do we have to air everybody's dirty laundry? Can't we just try to get along?" Alex reaches over and takes my hand, and then I realize Maggie is there, too. My support team.

  Dana leans into me. "If you came back," she says softly, "maybe we could paint the dining room cream again, and put up Momma's paintings if you wanted..."

  "No, we couldn't," I say. My eyes are smarting from the smoke. I hide my face in Alex's chest, to get away from the glare of the fire and all the little sparks that seem to be chasing me. I would just like to disappear inside his shirt to get away from all of them.

  "This isn't what Leon had in mind," I whisper to him.

  "But you know what? It's working," he whispers back. "I don't know why, but it is."

  "It's crazy. I want to get out of here."

  ***

  In the end, we don't do even half of what Leon ordered us to. Anginetta and Kyle come back, but they never do apologize or kiss anybody. When Anginetta hears what she missed—Dana's little revelation and speech—she says, "Oh, for heaven's sake. Did we really need to know all of that?" and Virginia says, "Exactly my point."

  No one bothers to tango, much less even dance. And when it comes time to sing the songs, nobody remembers the words, and we can't read the lyrics in the dark. "I always thought that 'We Are the World' song was too sappy anyway," Bob Arterton says, and Joe Wiznowski says he never heard of it. And as for "It Had to Be You"—well, it just ain't going to happen. The fire is dying down, and we're all standing around thinking of how to get away, but staying just the same.

  "Maybe Leon didn't realize that none of us is the way we used to be," Gracie says. "Standing around on a beach isn't going to change any hearts."

  "Yeah," Anginetta says. She turns and looks at Gracie. "So, do you play bridge? Virginia and I have been getting together with some ladies downtown on Thursday nights. Do you want to come?"

  Gracie shrugs, smiling. I can see she's pleased.

  Maggie and Dana are comparing bellies, and Mark and Teddy stand there with them, laughing at something. Mark, here on the beach in his business suit, still looks stiff and hard to talk to, but despite that, Teddy seems to be happy talking to him. I see Mark smile, and I remember that Maggie has told me he goes with her to therapy every week and that they're making some progress. She said they've now covered all their problems in fourth grade and will soon be able to tackle their middle-school issues. When I looked surprised, she laughed. "I'm kidding, Lily. I'm kidding!"

  Now Sloane comes over and puts his arm around me. "The whole party has gone to hell, because I'm such a rotten sergeant-at-arms." He looks at me. "That was some speech Dana made. I had no idea. Are you all right?"

  "Yeah. I'm fine."

  "Where are you living now? I've been trying to find you."

  "Oh... I moved out. Temporarily, I think."

  He smiles. "I've gotta do that, too. In fact, don't be mad, but I have to tell you that I'm skipping out on my lease."

  "Wait. Did we have a lease?"

  "I thought we did. But if you say we didn't, that's great. So do you remember me telling you about our agent dumping us? Well, long story short, best thing that coulda happened. We got somebody new, and he got us a contract—and we're going to Nashville."

  "Nashville? You're kidding."

  "Nope." He's grinning. "My mom's gone ballistic, of course, but that's okay. She'll get used to it. I'm taking my longtime girlfriend with me, too."

  " You have a longtime girlfriend? Since when?"

  "One month," he says. "She's been with me a whole thirty days."

  I grin at him. "So when are you leaving?"

  "I'm catching the train on Wednesday night."

  "Wednesday night? Wow, you don't give much notice, do you?" I realize suddenly that I'm freezing. Alex is on the other side of the fire, talking to Kyle. His face is glowing in the yellow light of the flame, and suddenly I remember that he told me last night that he loved me, and now—maybe it's the wine or maybe just that I see I've survived this party, but I want to go over and hear him say it again.

  "Well," I say to Sloane, but I'm distracted by watching Alex laugh. His hands are shoved down in his pockets, and he's leaning forward, listening, really listening to Kyle. I can't believe how grateful I suddenly feel that he came with me today. I force myself to turn back to Sloane. "We'll miss you lots," I say.

  "You know," he says and leans forward, "you should seriously think about living in that unit, you know. I mean, it needs a bunch of stuff—paint and furniture—but all your mom's paintings are hanging up there, and let's face it, they're better than that crap Dana has hung up in the other part of the house."

  "Maybe," I say. I feel like I'm in a daze. "Maybe so. It might be hard, though."

  "Hard?" he says, as though he's never heard of the word. "Lily, hard is moving to Nashville and trying to write songs under pressure when you have a full-time girlfriend. And she's a handful, believe me."

  I laugh. "You'll do fine."

  "So will you," he says. His eyes are bright. "But, Lily, really. Don't give up your house."

  Everybody's standing up by now, and the waiters have whisked all the plates away and are loading things into huge boxes. Then Krystal yells, "Oh my God, everyone. We forgot the most important thing!" We all look at her, her face illuminated by the last glowing coals of the fire. "We forgot to throw Leon into the Sound. I mean, throw his ashes into the Sound." She stops for a second. "He wanted me to say it that way first, so you would laugh."

  We all do laugh a little bit, amid the groans.

  She walks around and hands out little green plastic containers of ashes and smiles at all of us. I look down into my container and see what looks in the dimness like any ordinary gray dust. It's hard to believe this is what is left of Leon's body—that break-dancing, Jimmy Durante–imitating body. This is not really Leon, I say to myself.

  As a group, we take off our shoes and walk down to the edge of the water, struggling in the wet sand in our cold, bare feet. Krystal and Teddy have flashlights that they shine up into th
e sky. It takes some doing to get us all organized, but finally we're clustered just right.

  "Okay, at the count of three..." Krystal says. And when she gets to three, we all fling our ashes skyward. Little particles of Leon go showering into the beam of the lights in a perfect arc—and then, as if on cue, a huge gust of wind kicks up, and before we can move, the ashes fly back at us, as if they are not yet willing to let go.

  It's an odd, stunning moment. Nobody knows what to say, or how to behave. We're all slightly damp from the night air, so we get coated with ashes. Should we scrape them together and try again to send them out to sea? We're all a little speechless.

  And then Joe Wiznowski says, "Leon is trying to break dance his way into not going into the sea," and that makes us laugh. Only Krystal starts to cry just then, and like one big organic group, people surround her, patting her, soothing her. I hear somebody offer her a place to stay if she doesn't want to be there alone in that house tonight. Someone else says, "What will you do, honey? Are you staying here for good with us?"

  And then it starts to rain. At first it comes in drops so huge they hurt when they plonk on us, and then, after an impressive crack of thunder, it comes down in sheets. We scream and scatter in the dark, all running around in circles, picking up blankets and shoes and stray children, and then make a run for home. I take hold of Simon's hand and we run up the hill, getting stuck in the sand and having to haul ourselves out of it again and again, while the torrents of rain hit us in the face.

  Everyone is screaming and laughing, calling to each other through the buckets of water. My shoe comes off, and I stop to pick it up, but then—I don't know why—I just stand there, watching them all, all my people, with their hair and clothes plastered down, hobbling together up the hill drenched and ruined and yet holding onto each other for dear life, all laughing and yelling at once. Simon tugs on me and says, "Come on!" But I can't move. It comes to me then, like a sharp pain in my side, the realization of all that I have lost, through time and carelessness and waiting for perfection: my mother and father, a whole decade of knowing my sister, and now Leon. I lost my idyllic fantasies about the colony grown-ups, and, hell, I never did figure out how to make the cottage really my own home. Is that a chance that's forever gone, too? And besides all those things, I lost the cream-colored walls, my parents' bed, and—oh, let's say about five million chances to stand up for myself.