Waiting for Normal

by Leslie Connor

  Brynna, Katie and I had all been in the big bed together at the old house. They lay asleep. I lay awake.

  Mommers had called the first two nights. “Addie, my business plan is going really well. It’s just gonna take a little more time.”

  “Can’t you work on the plan here?”

  “I’ll be back soon enough, and you’re there for the babies. See, I planned this for your winter vacation week. You’re fine, aren’t you,” she’d said. But it didn’t sound like a question and she didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ll call tomorrow night,” she’d said. Click.

  But she didn’t call. Dwight did, and for some reason he asked for Mommers. I stayed quiet on the line. I watched the snow coming down outside on the deck where I’d left the light on for her.

  “Addie, is she home?”

  I had to whisper back to him. “No,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Not here,” I said.

  “How long has she been gone?” he asked.

  I said, “Three.”

  “Days?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh God.” His voice went down like my own sinking heart. “Are the babies okay?”

  “Sleeping,” I whispered. “I’m home from school this week, Dwight. We’re okay.”

  “Is there food?”

  “Peanut butter jellies.”

  “You warm? Furnace running?”

  I listened for the hum. “Yes.”

  “Door locked, honey?”

  “Yes.”

  “Addie, I’m calling Grandio. He can get there quickly. And I’m getting in the truck right now. I’ll see you in a couple of hours. Depends on the snow, but I’m coming home.”

  I put the phone on the cradle. I knew everything was ruined.

  When Grandio got to us that night, he came pushing through the door as soon as I unlocked it. I had to hop back so the door wouldn’t scrape the tops of my toes.

  “This is what I always said. That woman leaves a whole lotta nothin’ good every place she goes!” He ran his hand through his gray hairs. “Doesn’t she know she’s left her own babies home alone?” He searched the messy house for a fresh diaper for Katie even though I told him over and over again that it was better to just let her sleep. “Who knows when the last time was that kid got a clean bottom!” he raged. “The mother’s been gone for three days!”

  “I changed Katie before bed, Grandio. Let her sleep. She’ll just be scared,” I pleaded.

  Finally, he listened to me about the diaper. But he also said, “This is it. This is child abandonment . This is all we need. It’s over.”

  chapter 15

  late night mail

  “Psst! Addie!”

  “What?” I opened my eyes. I sat up in the dark and looked at Mommers. “You’re back! What time is it?”

  “Dunno. Two, I guess. I just wanted you to know I’m here.”

  “Late,” I said. I heard the computer booting up. “What are you doing?”

  “Checking my email. And I gotta shoot a note to Pete, too.”

  “Pete?”

  “That’s who I had dinner with. We worked on the business plan. Oh, Addie, he’s so smart!” she said. “And gorgeous, too.”

  “Plan? I thought it was an interview.”

  “Go back to sleep.” Mommers sat down and started typing.

  I lay back in my bunk but I couldn’t go back to sleep. I heard Mommers go into the bathroom. I climbed down from my bunk and I looked at the computer screen, where an unsent email glowed back.

  Pete:

  Loved our meeting. This is going to be great! Will see about finding more investors. Hope my contribution helps. See you online.

  Denise

  Mommers came out of the bathroom and I faced her squarely.

  “Did you give him our money from Dwight?” She put her hands on her hips and gave me a frown.

  chapter 16

  another dish of

  fish and chips

  I never got a straight answer out of Mommers that night. She didn’t say she had given Pete our money but she didn’t say she hadn’t either. For weeks she kept on meeting him, sometimes late into the night, and she spent a lot of time on the computer. Our phone line was almost never open. Even though she’d said something about her contribution in that email message, we didn’t seem to be having money troubles. Mommers had new “business clothes,” which she wore on her late night meetings with Pete. The trailer was filling up with office supplies. She even bought Halloween decorations that looked like coloring book drawings and she put them up all over the trailer. We had ghosts in top hats and flying bats on the walls. She put a pumpkin face over the bare light bulb in the kitchen. In the meantime, we were out of bread.

  Ms. Rivera came to my classroom to get me. She invited me into the hallway. “Addie, you’ve earned a spot in the Stage Orchestra.” She smiled.

  I leaped inside of my own skin.

  “I’ve been trying to call your home but the line has been busy.”

  “My mother uses the Internet a lot,” I said, “for work.”

  “Well, here’s a note you can give her. Practices are mandatory .” She tilted her head at me. “Monday and Thursday after school. We rest during Thanksgiving break. You’ll need an outfit. Black on the bottom, white on the top. Your choice, but simple works best. The holiday concert is always the second Friday in December.” She took a breath. “I think that’s it. Are you happy?”

  “Yes! Thank you.”

  I rushed back inside the classroom to tell Helena and Marissa. “Makes me wish I was in orchestra,” Marissa said. “But I’ll be in the audience.”

  “The audience is important!” Helena said, and we laughed because it was so true.

  Robert overheard us and he actually smiled. “That’s good you made it.”

  I squinted at him. “Why are you being nice?”

  He shrugged. “Think you can keep up learning the new music?”

  Everyone in my class knew that I was a mess when it came to learning anything new.

  I took a breath. “Yes,” I said. “I know I can.”

  Mommers got very excited about my spot in Stage Orchestra. She pinned the letter to the fridge and circled the concert date on the kitchen calendar with a sparkle pen from her office supplies.

  “Let’s celebrate!” she said. “Let’s go out to eat. How about Numbskull Dorry’s? Within walking distance!” she sang.

  “Can we afford it?”

  She waved a shiny credit card at me and danced a cha-cha.

  I stopped in my happy tracks. “Whose is that?” I asked.

  “Mine!” she said. “I got it from Pete. It’s for the business, but I can pay on it. Come on, Addie! Let’s have some fun!” She leaned right into my face and said, “Can you say that? Fun?” She scowled at me, then grinned. “Lighten up, kid! I’m employed!”

  We had a blast. First we dressed up more than we needed to. Mommers tossed me some of her clothes to try, which didn’t quite fit. I felt funny in lady clothes but Mommers talked me into wearing one of the shirts. She borrowed a glow-in-the-dark necklace from me and we both painted our fingernails—Mommers in hot orange, me with the clear stuff. We put our hair up on top of our heads and used rhinestone bobby pins to hold back the wisps.

  At Numbskull Dorry’s, I ordered first.

  “Fish and chips, please,” I said.

  “Fish and chips,” Mommers teased. “How predictable!”

  But I surprised her when I asked the waitress, “Is Rick in the kitchen tonight?”

  “You bet. Who shall I say is here?” the waitress asked.

  “Addie,” I said. “From the minimart.”

  “Well, it’s busy, but if he can get a second, I’m sure he’ll come out.” The waitress hurried off.

  Mommers pretended to be French, and she was loud about it, too. “Oddie from zee minimart?” She let her voice rise and fall. “And who is zee gen tleman, Reek?” The people from the next booth looked over at us
and smiled at our fun. I felt my cheeks turn warm.

  “Not Reek! Rick!” I whispered. “He’s just the owner.” I tried to keep a straight face but I was no good at that.

  Mommers sat back, her hand to her heart. “You’ve been keeping secrets! My, my, Oddie dahling! Tell me more!”

  I leaned forward and said, “When you call me Oddie, you sound like Katie!” We burst out laughing. Maybe it was just something about Numbskull Dorry’s. It was a good times place for us.

  Rick came out while we were having dessert. He greeted us as if we were his most important friends. He sat right down and Mommers flirted with him. I didn’t bother to tell her that he had a boyfriend.

  Later we walked home in the cool October night. The streetlamps lit the city sidewalks and jack-o’-lantern faces glowed from the porches and windows of the houses on Union Street. Halloween was just a few days off. I was sorry I would not be trick-or-treating with my little sisters. I wondered if my old Dalmatian costume had fit Brynna, and if Katie had found something that would make her into a hamster—she wanted to be Piccolo, she’d told me.

  Mommers put her hand on my shoulder to slow me in front of a brick house on a corner lot. Two orange pumpkins grinned in shining slices from a bench by the door. Little tissue ghosts hung from the knobby branches of a small tree beside the gate.

  Mommers bit her bottom lip and narrowed her eyes. “We’re gonna get a new place soon, Addison,” she told me. “Maybe even by Christmas.”

  I was not focused on Christmas at all. I was focused on the second Friday in December, which happened to be the twelfth. That was the night of our Stage Orchestra performance.

  I worked on the music every night and tried to be ready for each practice. Ms. Rivera kept her arrangement with me and I got the score ahead of everyone else so I could start “assimilating” it. I looked up assimilate. Webster’s listed some scientific terms like digest and metabolize first. But the second definition seemed closer to me. It said, “to absorb and incorporate, as in knowledge.” But to me, the word that made the most sense was learn : “to master through study.”

  Bingo!

  chapter 17

  a different sort

  of halloween

  I guess you could say that Halloween came and went that year, or should have. Like I say, I was pretty focused on December 12, but I did try and get Marissa and Helena to go trick-or-treating with me. I thought we could start at Helena’s, hit Seneca, and then cross to Union and come down the other side. That would have been about thirty houses—pretty good loot. But Helena’s mom took her kids to a neighborhood across the bridge, which was safer, she said, and it turned out that Marissa’s parents didn’t allow her to trick-or-treat at all.

  So I changed my plan. I’d do just Union and have Mommers walk out on the street with me. “We can look at the houses again,” I told her.

  But Mommers put it to me bluntly. “Addie, Halloween is for little kids. Maybe some of the kids in your class are still little but you aren’t.”

  “Helena is taller than I am. She’s going.”

  Mommers sighed through her teeth. “You’re short, but, Addie, you have boobs, in case you hadn’t noticed. People will turn you away.”

  “Helena’s boobs are bigger,” I mumbled.

  “Besides, I have plans,” Mommers told me.

  Soula and Elliot felt bad for me when I walked into the minimart after school and told them I had nothing to do on Halloween night.

  “Oh, come over here !” Elliot said, arms open. “You can dress up! I always do. You can hand out candy at the counter.”

  I grinned. I didn’t have a costume but one walk through Soula’s closet fixed that. Elliot put one of her big dresses on me—dropped it right over my own clothes—and belted it around me with two scarves. He helped me paint my face at Soula’s vanity table. He lined my eyes and drew in pointed lashes that came halfway down my cheeks. He gave me a big, bright, Soula pink mouth, and finished me off with a straw hat covered in purple fake flowers. “You’re a She-clown!” he said. He gave the hat a pat.

  “Tah-dah!” Elliot announced me as we came back into the minimart from the Greenhouse.

  “I don’t get it,” Soula said. She looked from me to Elliot and back at me again. “Where’s her costume?”

  Silence. I looked at Elliot. He was turning red right up the neck.

  Soula pointed a finger at him. “Gotcha!” she wailed. She burst out laughing, head back, pink mouth wide open.

  “Oh, you are terrible!” Elliot said, swatting at her. She slapped back, still giggling.

  “Hey, Little Cookie? You didn’t let him shave your head too, did you?”

  “Oh, Soula!” I gulped. Then I laughed.

  “Oh, now that’s really bad.” Elliot shook his head and raised one hand in the air to make her stop.

  Soula turned to me and sighed. “Ha-ha! I got him good, didn’t I?” I met her hands in a double high five and we laced our fingers together.

  “You got me too,” I said, and we held on to each other for a moment longer.

  I held Soula’s big dress up around my knees and started home to tell Mommers where I’d be that night. As I crossed the street, I could see Mr. and Mrs. Rose inside the Heads and Roses Laundry Stop. The mannequin heads in the front window were all decked out in black and orange with witches’ hats and spidery wigs and the Roses were placing jack-o’-lanterns between them. When they saw me they started laughing and that made me laugh. I must have been quite a sight. I waved back with big sweeps of my arm.

  I was dying to have Mommers see my costume, but when I opened the trailer door I could tell something was wrong.

  One cigarette burned in the ashtray by the computer. Mommers held a second one in her lips. She was clawing through the boxes of new office supplies. She brought out two packages of Bic pens, a handful of White-Outs and a box of binder clips, and dumped them on the table.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She slammed two plastic file boxes into each other and swore. She pushed her fingers into her hair, let a breath out and finally looked at me and her cigarette bobbed up and down.

  “Are you looking for something?” I asked.

  “Oh God. Look at you.” She rolled her eyes at me.

  I had forgotten about my made up face. “Oh yeah.” I grinned. “I’m gonna hand out candy at the minimart tonight.”

  Mommers shook her head. “I told you you’re too old for that stuff.”

  “I’m not trick-or-treating. Besides, even Elliot dresses up.”

  “You just can’t do it the way I say, can you, Addison?” She sighed.

  “I don’t want to miss out on Halloween,” I said.

  “Well, I’m going out,” Mommers said.

  “To work?”

  “Yes. I’m meeting Pete.”

  “Mommers, when is all this stuff going to the office?” I asked.

  “This is the office. The office is at my house.”

  “House?” I felt a twinge of sickness inside of me. Mommers was telling lies to Pete.

  “When everything gets up and running, we will have a house, and then I’ll tell Pete about how little we actually started with. And I’ll tell him about you and—”

  “He doesn’t know you have a kid? Three kids.”

  “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” she insisted.

  I looked at all the office supplies. “When are you going to set it all up? When do you start using the stuff?”

  Mommers looked at the boxes all around her. She took a fast hard drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke back out. “You think I bought too much, don’t you? You know what, Addie? You have to spend money to make money. It’s in every business text and journal across the country. Why …why are you asking me this anyway?” She shook her hair back.

  “I just wondered,” I said.

  Mommers went into her bedroom and when she came out she flung a small overnight bag onto the table. She disappeared again, into the bathroom this ti
me, and came out with fresh makeup, her hair sprayed up, and new earrings on.

  “Pete and I are taking a short business trip,” she said. “A little overnighter. It won’t be a big deal and you can take care of yourself.”

  “A trip? But, Mommers . . .”

  “Oh, Addie, don’t! Please! Just don’t! I can’t take it. I’m trying to put together a life here!” She shook her head and put her hands up like she was trying to stop something in the air.

  I watched her just a second. I knew that she needed me to say it was okay, but I couldn’t do that any more than I could keep her from going. Mommers was like that. If she decided something needed buying, she bought it. If she decided to go out all night, she went.

  “Is there bread?” I asked.

  Mommers huffed and opened her purse. She took out a ten dollar bill and slapped it on the counter. “There,” she said. She stopped to breathe. “Buy bread from your friends.” She motioned toward the minimart.

  I followed her out and watched her marching up the street toward the bus station on her business heels.

  I fed Piccolo a little carrot tip—I ate the rest. I slogged back over to the minimart—not because I wanted to anymore, just because there was nothing else to do. It turned out the place was quiet. I guess everyone got their treats and gasoline before the big night so they wouldn’t need to make a stop right in the middle of it. We saw half a dozen customers and I gave candy bars to five of them. The sixth one was a diabetic; he told me.

  Soula and Elliot tried to entertain me by putting candy corns and pumpkin shaped marshmallows into the microwave and turning it on high. That was kind of funny the first time and I liked listening to Soula laugh so hard. But it got messy and soon I felt bored with the game. They tuned the store TV in to one of those Fright Night shows. Soula sat in her lawn chair and Elliot hopped up on the checkout counter to watch. I pulled up a milk crate but I didn’t last long.

  Around eight thirty, I told them I was going to wander home. It’s hard to wander when you only live fifty feet away. I stopped out by the island where the customers pump their gas and wrapped my hand around the pole that held up the rain roof there. I let my weight take me around and around in low swinging dips, my hand squeaking along the column. Each time the Heads and Roses Laundry Stop went by I caught the glowing jack-o’-lanterns in my sight line. I should do our laundry, I thought. I kept going around and around until I could feel heat and a blister coming up in my palm.