Some Kind of Normal

by Heidi Willis

  "Yes?"

  When she answers her voice is quiet. "It is Ashley, isn't it? It's y'all that are going to be in this research thing, isn't it?" My silence is the only confirmation she needs. "Oh Babs."

  "I should go."

  "Don't go. I'm not judging you. You know I don't care so much about that stuff. I'm just surprised is all. You and Travis. . .. Y'all have been so outspoken about it."

  I want to correct her and tell her it's only Travis that's all hung up on this, but I'm smart enough to know this don't make me look better. "It's not like what they're saying."

  "Well, of course not. It never is when it's your own child. I expect I'd do the same. You know, see the other side if it would save my kid."

  "You mean you'd throw in your morals, too."

  "I didn't say that. I'd never say that."

  I hang up without saying goodbye. Ashley stands in the hall, watching, as I throw the phone on Travis's chair. "How long you been there?"

  "Are we doing something wrong, Mom?"

  I reach out and pull her into a tight hug. She's nothing in my arms but elbows and ribs. "Of course not."

  She pulls away and I let her.

  "Morgan's mom won't let me talk to her. And some of the other girls from school won't answer when I call. Are they afraid they'll catch it?"

  How does a mom answer this? There probably are a few, Morgan's mom most of all, but after talking to Janise, my guess is it's much more than fearing they'll catch diabetes. A few suggestive news reports, a few protesters with signs, and we're the enemy. We're the baby killers. And the fact is, if it took that to save Ashley, I would've done it in a heartbeat. So the fact that we're not don't make me innocent.

  "Stay here," I say, grabbing my purse.

  It takes less than ten minutes to drive to the church, where I park illegally in a handicapped space and march directly to the kitchen. The hospitality committee is exactly where they always are this time each week, their gossiping echoing down the halls off the sanctuary, which might as well be called the sanctimonious. I forget which SAT week that one was.

  They stop the gabbing as soon as I fill the doorway.

  "The devil has arrived," I say, staring them each down. Yolanda. Gloria. Brenda. Vickie. Dina. Jen. Dot. Erin. Alicia. And two dozen angel food cakes. All their kindness of the past weeks flits through my mind, but I push it out.

  "Babs! What are you talking about?"

  "Isn't that what y'all are saying? It is Ashley. She's the one on the news." Looks pass between them, but no one speaks. "Are y'all part of the protest, too? Are y'all going to be marching down Main Street holding your signs with the rest of the holy-rollers? You going to be praying at the meetings that the government steps in and stops this insanity? You going to show up at Ashley's funeral and tell us how sorry y'all are that God didn't heal her?" I look at each of them, their eyes wide and surprised. "You don't think this is the miracle? We prayed, and this is what God sent us. And don't you dare fool yourselves into thinking if this was your son or daughter you wouldn't do the same thing."

  I leave and no one follows me. I'm crying by the time I get to the car, and I can hardly see the road on the way home. I sit in the driveway a while, trying to get control before going back inside. When I finally open the door, I see Logan sitting at his drum set in the garage, watching.

  "Lord Almighty, can't a woman have a moment alone around this house?" I grab my keys and march past him, thankful he don't say anything.

  ~~~~

  Sunday morning I lay in bed as Travis and the kids get around for church. Logan and Ashley fight for the bathroom, and Travis burns the eggs, and everything seems so normal I almost make myself believe that we could walk into church like every Sunday since Logan was two. But I know it's not, and the thought of facing all those people thinking God-knows-what makes me crawl under the covers.

  I can hear the clink of silverware as the kids eat.

  Travis comes in. "You getting up today or what?"

  "No." I haven't told him about yesterday, about Janise's phone call, about the women at the church and the news reports.

  "Come on," he says, dragging the covers off me. "You hate being late."

  "Go without me."

  "No. This ain't no time to be missing church."

  This is exactly the time to miss church, I think, but I sit up anyway. "Go on," I say. "Go eat. I'll be there in a minute."

  We're good and late getting out, and by the time we get to church the parking lot is full. A small swarm of activists are milling around in the streets in front of the church. They aren't the reporter types-- more like the angry people who show up anywhere there is something to be angry about with hateful signs that say things like, "You'll burn in hell!" I think about telling them if they're so worried about hell perhaps their backsides oughta find a pew in a church somewhere on a Sunday morning rather than raising ruckus outside one.

  I wonder if the group will grow when other churches begin letting out, and I don't relish facing that. I begin pulling the kids back to the car. "Let's go. We should get home."

  "We can't avoid this forever," Travis says, stopping me with his hand on my shoulder.

  "Are they here for us?" asks Logan.

  "Cool," says Ashley, feeling more like a celebrity than a target.

  Travis leads us through the stragglers, who jostle around us until someone shouts, "That's them!" Suddenly people are crowding around us.

  "Are you the girl in the stem cell trial?"

  "How are you feeling?"

  "You don't look that sick!"

  "Why are you doing this?"

  "Did you know the doctor doing the treatment learned how to do this by using aborted fetuses?"

  "How can you go to church and call yourselves Christians and still do this?"

  I notice the lack of reporters. There's no local news crew, no ABC or CBS; I can't even find anyone that looks like a newspaper journalist. Travis pushes the flimsy posters away and makes a path that he shoves the kids through. I follow close, and I'm almost at the top of the stairs when someone yells over the din.

  "Are you aware this procedure can kill your daughter?"

  Travis whips around, as close to murder as I've ever seen him. "She's dying now, you miscreant."

  He pushes us through the front doors and closes them behind us. The narthex is empty. An usher hands us bulletins, and we have to walk up halfway before we find enough seats for all of us.

  "Miscreant?" I whisper, laughing.

  "You're not the only one reading Logan's SAT book."

  A few people turn to look at us, but there seems to be a concerted effort to keep eyes front. Four of Logan's buddies nod at him and he nods back, but he stays with us. Ashley's itching her stomach like crazy but she joins in the chorus, her voice high and sweet next to Logan's low throaty song. Travis puts his arm around Ashley and sings loudly and off-key, which he always says is pleasing to God 'cause if God wanted him to sing praises better he would of given him a better voice. I hold the bulletin in both hands and mouth the words. They're just words.

  I go through the motions of the service, stand, sit, sing, pray, shake hands and smile, pass the offering, clap for the soloist, fill out the registration card. I do it because it's what I'm supposed to do, but my mind flits back to why we're here in the first place.

  The memory of Donna Jean in the bathroom flits through my mind, and I let my eyes wander across the aisles until I see her, sitting straight as an Indian next to her very expensive and educated-looking husband. She's listening to the sermon. Not pretending, but really listening. It means something to her, something that is just out of reach to me.

  Next to me is Travis, who would give up his own daughter for what he thinks God tells us about the value of life.

  Last night I snuck the SAT book out of Logan's room to read while I smoked. I got stuck up on the word "elusive." The big black sky, the vastness of space, the stars flung there by a God who is bigger than all of it. A God wh
o wants to love me, if only I'd believe. A daughter whose life hangs on the thread of possibility. One more insulin. One more steroid. One more trial. The answer's there, if only we could find it. Could there be a more heart wrenching word than elusive?

  At the end of the service, Ashley begs to go see her friends, so Travis and me watch her scamper down the aisle. Most of them gather around her, but a few avoid eye contact and slip out the back door. Donna Jean comes to say hi as does Pastor Joel and baby Mary Ashley, but most people look away and busy themselves with other things. Pastor Joel presses Mary Ashley into my arms, and I feel the warmth of her tiny body against me. My chest hurts the way it did when I nursed my own, an ache to pour life into her and hold her close and keep her safe. She smells of milk and baby powder, and when I think I can't breathe anymore, I place her back in Pastor Joel's arms and rush out the back door myself.

  Travis finds me on the bench in the gardens and sits without saying anything. The sky is so blue it hurts my eyes. I haven't told him about the Google hits on Dr. Van Der Campen, but now I can't keep the secret anymore and it all spills out.

  His puts his arm around me, and I finally melt into him. "Are all of them right? Are we doing the wrong thing?"

  He puts his lips to my head; I can feel his breath in my hair. "What's done is done, Babs." At first I think he talking about us and the clinical trial, but then I realize as he talks, he's talking about Jack. "We all make mistakes. The best we can do is learn from them and move on. And it seems like Dr. Van Der Campen has done that. He's not testing embryos anymore. And Ashley isn't getting baby cells. She's getting her own."

  "Everyone thinks--"

  "Everyone thinks wrong. We know. That's all that matters."

  We sit in the garden, quiet together, until Donna Jean comes looking for us and tells us the crowd is getting bigger outside, and we should take Logan and Ashley and go.

  We don't stay for cookies and punch and socializing. By the looks of everyone not looking at us, there wouldn't be much socializing anyway. We find Logan on the stage looking over the drum set and talking with the praise band members, and Ashley's in the basement with a few friends. We go through the basement walk-up to get to the car and manage to get almost out of the parking lot before anyone sees us.

  ~~~~

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  There's an article you should read this morning," Travis says, downing his orange juice before heading out to work.

  "I ain't got time to read some NASCAR update," I say, punching cereal carbs into a calculator. "You can't have this," I tell Ashley, handing her back the box to put away. Dr. Benton told us no more than fifteen carbs a meal, less if we can do it. The insulin pumped through Max into the umbilical vein is only partly successful, and the last two days I've watched her sugars start to go back up.

  "That's okay. I'd rather have bacon."

  "We don't got that. Your dad can't eat it."

  "How 'bout a hot dog?"

  "Fine." I stick a hot dog in the microwave, not caring that it's not exactly a breakfast food. It's protein. It's three carbs. It works.

  "It's not NASCAR," Travis says, tossing the paper across the counter. "It's the trial."

  "Is it about me?" Ashley grabs at it, eager to see her name in print which, if it's up to us, will be never.

  "Eat your breakfast," I say, shoving the hot dog with no bun at her and taking the paper.

  "I gotta go." Travis leans over and pecks my cheek, a new habit that's growing on me, and leaves. I sit on the stool at the counter and open the paper. On page two, there's a picture of Dr. Van Der Campen and a short article about the trial, although as I read I figure out it's more about him than anything.

  As I read the first paragraph, I worry I'll see all those things from the Internet about him, and I don't want Ashley thinking we could be sleeping with the devil here. As far as she knows, Dr. Benton found him for us, and that alone made him all right in my eyes. But as I skim the article, it's not just about his embryonic research, and I realize how little I know about him as a person and a doctor.

  I scan over his credentials. They're a long list of ivy-league sounding names, some of which are overseas, and research grants he's been given. The article explains a little about the trial in the Netherlands, although it fails to tell about how each of the patients is fairing and mostly emphasizes the fact that he did it there 'cause the U.S. wasn't too keen on letting him do it here.

  It all seems very unimportant and I'm beginning to wonder why Travis thought I'd be interested when the last paragraph gets me in the gut. I reread it, wondering what significance it might have. Medically, it means nothing. Personally, it changes everything. Despite the way the doctor hardly talks to us and comes off like he's thinking of himself better than us, I suddenly feel kinship with him.

  "What is it, Mom?" Ashley is peering over my shoulder, and I consider hiding the article but then decide she might as well know.

  She takes the paper and reads the article half out loud, mumbling through parts she finds boring, but getting clearer towards the end as she reads his personal info.

  "Van Der Campen was once married with a daughter of his own, when, at age three, his daughter developed type 1 diabetes." She stops and looks at me.

  "Go on," I say.

  She reads more. "Struck with a complication called hypoglycemic unawareness, his daughter fell into a coma at the age of eleven when her blood sugar plunged, and she died before rescue workers could revive her." Her eyes grow wide. "Oh mom, his little girl died!"

  I don't know if she knows what hypoglycemic unawareness is. I remember seeing it on one of the message boards, but I can't pinpoint what it is. Something about high or low blood sugars.

  "His wife, also a diabetic, unable to cope with the guilt of passing on the genetic DNA that caused her daughter's diabetes, and ultimately her death, killed herself less than a year later," she continues. "These events spurred Van Der Campen to finding a cure, driving him out of the United States and to another country where he could test his theories, and then back home, in hopes of saving even one family the tragedy that has haunted his own."

  Ashley holds the paper a minute, staring at the words before putting it down. I lay my hand on her shoulder, but she brushes it off and leaves the room without another word.

  ~~~~

  The great thing about the hospital was that, when we were there, there's nothing else but Ashley and getting well. Back home, the rest of life waits for us.

  After our less-than-inspirational Sunday at church, Monday brings one more thing I'd like to avoid: the county school board.

  We missed the end of the month meeting while Ashley was in the hospital, but they've made a special session just for us. The meeting room is small and ugly, too-bright fluorescent lights covering the ceiling and a long, fake wood table that the board members sit behind and try to look important.

  I have no idea what to expect, other than a battle, so I'm armed with a folder full of Ashley's school records: her straight-A report card and her student-of-the-month certificates and the bumper stickers we get year after year for her outstanding behavior. I have her medical records from the past few months and the 504 that Travis and I never filled out since she never went back to school.

  Turns out I don't need none of them though, 'cause one of the board members holds out a letter from her principal saying she believed the "incident" with Ashley was merely a lack of information on our parts, and that it would be a shame for Ashley to be penalized for something that clearly was not a risk to others. Also, there's the note we sent to the nurse that day, who was out of town and didn't get it in time. She sent in a letter of apology for the mix up.

  "Technically," a stodgy-looking man with a bushy mustache says, "we could expel her. Zero tolerance means we don't give exceptions to ignorance." I bite my tongue so I don't say nothing to get us more in trouble and wait for him to finish.

  "Clearly, though," a girthy woman with big hair says, "it wouldn't serve
either the school or Ashley well to expel her."

  I wait.

  "Should we vote?" asks the mustache man. "All in favor of dismissing the case against Ashley Babcock, say aye." All five member say aye. "So dismissed," he says. I expect him to bang a gavel or something, but he merely shoves the papers off to the side and opens a new folder.

  "Now let's deal with the case against Logan Babcock." The others shuffle their papers, too.

  My evidence in favor of Logan is much thinner. He don't have the stellar grades Ashley's got, nor the certificates for behavior. Ashley's case I was mad about. Logan's I'm worried about.

  "We have some witnesses, I believe?" girthy woman says, motioning to a woman I hadn't noticed in the back of the room. She nods and opens the door. Three people enter. One is the baseball coach, one is the principal, and the other is a teacher, I think.

  The principal begins by explaining the charges against Logan, emphasizing what she calls "the disparity between his grades and his test scores." She's brought his report cards and the standardized test scores and places them on the table in front of the board members like she's some lawyer laying out evidence for her case.

  "This is not the first time Mr. Babcock has been in trouble with this school, either," she adds. "He has shown a pattern of disrespect for both the school system and authority and is considered by almost all of the administration and staff as rebellious."

  "How so?" I charge.

  "Yes," says a tiny lady behind the table. "How so?"

  "For one, his clothes and hair. Even though he has received multiple warnings, and I have spoken to Mrs. Babcock here about it several times, he continues to wear his hair in a Mohawk and dye it neon colors. It's extremely distracting to the other students and to the staff members."

  The teacher I don't know, who is sitting in the chairs behinds me, clears his throat. "I haven't found it to be at all distracting," he says.

  "And it's not against the dress code," I add. "If it were against the dress code, I'd make him change it, but it's not."