Entering Normal

by Anne Leclaire

  “I got a cractured arm,” Zack says.

  “That so?” Ty ignores Opal’s question.

  “Want to write on my cast? Can he, Mama? Can he write on it?”

  Somehow, before she can muster up an answer, Ty Miller is standing in her front hall. Well, it’ll take more than a box of pastries and a bunch of bananas for him to worm his way into her life. “I forgot to pay you at the garage,” she says. “I’ll get your money.”

  “No hurry,” he says, but she’s already halfway to the kitchen. When she returns, he’s writing on Zack’s cast. He’s drawn a line of musical notes with the black marker and is using the fine-tip yellow one to make a little harmonica. Zack is leaning against his knee with a smile so big Opal’s heart could just split because she’s so jealous.

  When he finishes the last flourish, she holds out a ten. She readies herself for his refusal, gets set to tell him she doesn’t take handouts from strangers. But he looks directly at her with those startling eyes and slips the bill in his jeans pocket, leaving her with a mouthful of argument and nowhere to spend it.

  “Look, Mama,” Zack says. “Look what Ty put on my cast.”

  “I see,” she says, civil as can be.

  “What’s that?” Zack asks, pointing to the tiny drawing.

  “A harmonica,” Ty answers. “You ever see one?”

  “Nope.”

  “Want to?”

  “Yes.”

  “You wait right here.”

  It doesn’t take him but two minutes to return. Ignoring Opal, he kneels down on the floor by Zack and begins to play. With the first dozen notes—just a quick riff up the scale—Opal can hear the sure, sweet sound of someone good. He slides up and down the mouthpiece a couple of times then hands it to Zack. “Here. Give it a try.”

  Before Opal can even collect herself enough to protest—she doesn’t even want to think about where Ty Miller’s mouth has been—Zack is blowing, creating wheezy, weak sounds.

  “You do it,” he says, handing the harmonica back to Tyrone.

  Ty cups his hands around the harmonica and starts. He hasn’t gone half a bar into the song when Opal recognizes an old blues number she’s heard half her life: “Train Whistle Blues.” In spite of herself, she closes her eyes. If she didn’t know better, she could think she was back in New Zion with Mr. Moses sitting on the bench outside of Clark’s hardware, nursing his Friday night hangover. She can picture him so clearly, elbows resting on his knees, hands cupped around his mouth, making that old mouth harp moan and cry and talk.

  “Well, that was nice,” she says when he’s finished, hearing in her voice the cool, extrapolite tone Melva uses whenever she doesn’t like someone.

  “Thanks.”

  “Reminds me of someone back home.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “North Carolina.”

  “Never been there,” he says, “but I’m going someday. It’s home to one of my idols.”

  “Who’s that? Jesse Helms?”

  He laughs. “No. An old harmonica player. Brother Jones. The best.”

  Zack pulls on his arm. “Show me how,” he says. “Show me how to do it.”

  “Tell you what,” Ty says. “How’d you like one of your own?”

  “Zack,” Opal says. “Take these in the kitchen.” She hands him the bananas. He starts to fuss. “Go on, sugah. Do as I say.”

  “You better go,” she says as soon as Zack is out of sight.

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  “I just don’t like people making promises to my boy. Promises they can’t deliver on.”

  He looks her straight in the eyes. “I never say anything I can’t deliver on, Opal.”

  In spite of all her best intentions, in spite of her vow to give up sex, she feels the arrow of desire shoot directly from her throat to her belly.

  “I’m not a liar,” he says. “Whatever else I am, I don’t lie.” Reflexively his fingers trace the scar on his cheek. “A man should keep his word, whatever it costs him.”

  Lord, is she heating up. If she even looks at him, she’s sure he’ll read it on her face.

  “And you, Opal Gates? What do you believe in?”

  “Look here,” she says. “I guess what I believe in is my business.” Just because he comes marching into her house with a box of brownies, a bunch of bananas, and a harmonica sweet enough to make a dead goat weep, that doesn’t give him any claim on her.

  Instead of being insulted, he laughs. “You like blues? I play weekends over in Springfield. Part of a blues band. Maybe you could come to hear us some night. You too,” he says to Zack, who has reappeared.

  “Can we, Mama?” Zack asks. “Please.”

  “We’ll see,” Opal says, a phrase she’s heard from Melva half her life and swore she’d never say to her son. “We’ll see.”

  “Guess I better quit while I’m ahead,” Ty says.

  “What makes you think you’re ahead?”

  He laughs. “I’ll call you with directions.”

  After he leaves, Opal returns to the kitchen. And isn’t the very first thing her eyes land on the Chiquita sticker. Well, fuck. Plain as udders on a cow. Of everything on earth that Tyrone Miller might have chosen to show up at her door with, he’s picked a bunch of bananas. Right then and there, Opal knows she is in a heap of trouble.

  “I’m getting a harmonica,” Zack says. “Ty’s getting me one.”

  “We’ll see,” Opal says as she pours him some Coke. She gets him settled with a brownie and then digs out 1000 Names for Your New Baby. She flips to the T’s. “Tyrone,” she reads. “(Celtic) of uncertain meaning. Dim., Ty.”

  She slams the book shut. For sure, the last thing she needs in her life is uncertainty. She marches straight back to the kitchen and peels the sticker off the door with her thumbnail. Zack watches her with interest.

  She rolls it between her fingers until it forms a little ball and then throws it in the trash.

  The fact is some signs need erasing before they can do much damage.

  The heat in her belly takes a little more concentration to make disappear.

  CHAPTER 14

  ROSE

  ROSE IS IN THE FIRST-AID AISLE OF MAHONEY DRUGS, picking out medicated ointment for her itch—something with some potency to it. She squints at the lettering on the tube she is holding. Why the manufacturers don’t make the print large enough for an ordinary person to read is beyond her. Prescription strength relief, she makes out. That sounds promising.

  Too late, she looks up to see Mary Winski bearing down. Mary is a toucher, and if it’s one thing Rose can’t stand it’s people pawing at her.

  Plus she still can’t forgive Mary for the scene she made at the funeral, carrying on loud enough to turn heads, as if Todd were her son. Now she has to brace herself for the overly solicitous hug. As she approaches, Mary’s face just melts into a mask of pity. It’s enough to make a person want to throw up.

  Before Todd’s death, the two of them hardly exchanged ten words a month, but after the funeral the woman just kept calling, insisting Rose come over for lunch or to swim in her pool. Rose would rather be dead. As if she’d even want to swim in that ridiculous pool or go to the parties Mary holds in her backyard, which she’s strung with colored lights on anything that stands still. And those dreadful plastic Japanese lanterns. As if they had some big Hollywood pool instead of one of those aboveground ones that are as ugly as sin no matter how you try to disguise them with shrubs. If there’s one thing Rose can’t abide, it’s someone who puts on airs.

  Mary is dressed in fuchsia sweat pants two sizes too small and a pair of purple striped running shoes with Velcro straps instead of laces. At least Rose hasn’t come to that. As Mary makes a beeline for her, Rose stiffens for the inevitable embrace.

  “I hear that girl is seeing Tyrone Miller,” Mary says, bulldozing right in.

  Rose shrugs, noncommittal. She has no doubt everyone in Normal has heard about all the time Ty is spending over a
t Opal’s. The girl is grist for the town’s mill, and every single thing about her and her boy is fair game. Ned said that all anyone over at Trudy’s could talk about for the better part of two days was the business about the boy’s broken arm and the bruise on his leg and the emergency-room doctor’s suspicions and the way that girl had no sooner left the hospital than she’d taken the child to the Creamery and fed him ice cream and how he threw up all over Ty’s boots. He reports this to reinforce his argument that Rose should continue to have nothing to do with Opal.

  “You’ve probably seen more than any of us,” Mary says, her eyes all alight with the prospect of fresh news. “Living right next door and all. What’s she like?”

  “I don’t know any more than you do, Mary,” Rose says firmly.

  Mary leans in, takes hold of her arm. “But you went with her to Mercy when the boy broke his arm. Isn’t that right?”

  Rose nods. Let’s get off that subject. Every time she thinks about the lie she told the doctor, she feels faint. She lives in dread that somehow Ned will find out. “What in tarnation were you thinking of?” he’d say, and before she could even begin to explain, he’d trot her back to Mercy to straighten it all out. Ned can’t stand a lie.

  “I don’t know any more than you do,” she says as she tosses the medication into her cart with the Tums and Anacin and Crest. “And I don’t like gossip.” Before Mary can respond, Rose wheels off down the aisle. One thing about Todd’s death, it set her free from caring about the good opinion of people like Mary Winski.

  NED DROPPED HER OFF EARLIER ON HIS WAY TO THE STATION and now, as promised, Willis Brown is waiting in the parking lot to drive her home. As soon as he sees her, he scoots around the cab and, deaf to her protests, takes the package from her and opens the passenger door.

  “I’m not an invalid, for heaven’s sake, Willis,” she says.

  “Cold last night,” he says as he slides behind the wheel. “They say it’s going to drop to the low twenties tonight. Bet we get snow any day now.”

  “I guess.” Rose doesn’t give a hoot whether it snows or not.

  “The walnuts are dropping off the tree over at Hudson’s farm, covering the ground like a blanket. My grandpa always said that was a sure sign of a hard winter to come.”

  Rose’s own father didn’t hold much stock with the walnut method of foretelling a cold winter. The thickness of a fox’s fur. The tightness of corn husks. That’s what to look for. She doesn’t share this with Willis.

  “I remember when I was a kid we always had the first snow by Thanksgiving. Here it is December and we haven’t seen a flake.”

  Willis isn’t a day older than she is but acts as if he were born in the last century. Same conversation every time she takes his cab. He and Ned are a pair of stuck records.

  She falls quiet and stares out the window as the cab continues down Main. Creeping change is coming to Normal. Three new shops have opened in the past year. One is a wine and cheese place. Imagine. An entire store just for wine and cheese. A bank has set up credit card headquarters over in Hallway, and entire tobacco fields on the outskirts of town have been leveled to make way for ugly subdivisions. Even isolated by grief, Rose feels the change; she doesn’t like it.

  When Willis pulls up to her house, she has her hand ready on the knob, all prepared to open the door before he can get it for her.

  As he pulls away, giving a little toot, she peeks next door. No sign of Opal Gates.

  She unlocks the door, takes the day’s mail from the box. She sets her bag on the kitchen table, puts the pile of mail at Ned’s place. Bills and junk mail is about all they get, and she’s happy to have him deal with it. She’s turning away when the top envelope catches her eye. Handwritten address on the front. It doesn’t look like a bill.

  She holds it at arm’s length, squinting. Bifocals will be next.

  Raylee Gates, she reads. It’s a moment before she realizes Bert Green has made a mistake and mixed a letter intended for next door in with their mail. She suspects these things happen a lot more than the post office lets on. She’ll point out his error tomorrow.

  She drops the letter on the counter, separate from the others, and carries her purchases upstairs. She tucks the ointment in the middle drawer of her dresser under a slip where Ned won’t see it. Not that he’d have cause to be looking through her bureau, but it’s best to be on the safe side. The rest of the things she stores in the bathroom cabinet. It’s nearly noon. Time for lunch.

  First thing her eyes rest on when she gets downstairs is the envelope. Bert should be more careful. Something like a person’s mail should be secure. He’s just lucky it didn’t land up with someone else’s mail. Mary Winski would probably be heating a kettle to steam it open right now.

  The postmark is too blurry to make out; she gets Ned’s magnifying glass from the desk. New Zion, North Carolina. New Zion. Just right for a southern town. As far as Rose can decipher it was posted two days ago. She reexamines the name.

  Raylee Gates. The Ray and lee all scrunched together like one word. The boy’s father? Didn’t Opal say she wasn’t married? Why the same last name?

  Curiosity killed the cat, her mother used to say.

  IT TAKES THREE RINGS BEFORE OPAL ANSWERS THE BACK door.

  “Here,” Rose says, thrusting the envelope at her. “This was mixed in with our mail.” She can see beyond the girl’s shoulder that the kitchen is a mess. Sink full of dirty dishes and the whole place no cleaner than you’d expect. Louise would have a conniption fit if she saw her kitchen in this condition. There is a spidery drawing held to the refrigerator by magnets: two stick figures with wide smiles. The big one has red bolts flaming out from the head. The small one has matching bolts. No sign of any father. No sign of any Raylee.

  “Rose,” Opal says, pleased. “Come on in. Want a cup of coffee? A muffin?”

  Rose spies a plate of misshapen muffins.

  “Blueberry. I made them myself.”

  Well, a person could tell that just by looking. Probably a mix.

  “I think this letter’s meant for you,” Rose says, ignoring the invitation. “The last name’s the same and all, but it was addressed to a man, Raylee Gates.”

  “Oh,” Opal smiles brightly. “That’s me.”

  “You?”

  “Yep. Raylee was my name before I changed it to Opal.”

  “You changed your name?” Rose has never heard of anyone changing names, except maybe criminals.

  “Four years ago,” Opal says. “Raylee was my middle name, after my daddy’s father. I think he always wanted a boy, but I was what he got.”

  “Well, Opal’s nice,” Rose says. If she were going to change her name, she’d certainly pick something prettier, not so old-fashioned.

  “It means ‘jewel,’ ” Opal says. “And opals are my favorite stone. The way they look so soft and pretty but hold fire inside.”

  “Is it legal? Changing your name like that?” She can’t imagine a person can just up and change her name like that.

  “Well, I had to go to court. Before a judge and all. But it’s important that your name fits you.” She smiles at Rose. “I looked up your name in my name book. It means just what it is—a rose. Just right for you.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Rose says, twisting her hands in embarrassment.

  “For a fact, names are important,” Opal says again. “I must’ve spent a hundred hours trying to decide what to name Zack. Billy wanted to name him after him. Fat to no chance of that. Zackery means ‘the Lord’s remembrance.’ ”

  Rose realizes she hasn’t the slightest idea what the meaning of “Todd” is. She never gave a minute’s thought to the meaning of it when she and Ned chose it. She would like to ask Opal to look it up in her book.

  “How did you land here in Normal?” she asks.

  “It’s where I was when I used up three tanks of gas,” Opal says. “Listen, don’t stay here standing. Come on in.” Next thing, Rose is hearing all about the die fr
om some Monopoly game and how this was Opal’s sign of how far she should drive.

  “Really. Three tanks,” she says, as if throwing a die is a perfectly sane way to arrive at a destination. She’s glad Ned isn’t around to hear this.

  “I pay attention to signs,” Opal says. “Don’t you?”

  “No,” Rose says. She knows better now than to trust in such foolishness.

  “My Aunt May says signs are the Lord’s way of letting you know He’s always making plans for you way down the road, plans you can’t even imagine. I’m not so sure about the Lord part of it, but I do believe there are signs giving us information. There’s meaning to things. We’ve just got to have patience to find them.”

  Patience. This girl doesn’t have the least idea what patience means. Sitting for hours—day after day—holding a pair of your dead son’s socks in your hands and waiting for some indication he isn’t lost to you forever. That’s patience. For all it’s worth.

  “And random acts,” Opal is saying. “Things that look purely accidental—like me ending up here in Normal—all end up making a pattern. If you pay attention, in the end, taken together, these random acts all make a kind of sense.”

  Rose thinks this over. “Like a quilt,” she says.

  “Exactly,” Opal cries. “Exactly like a quilt.”

  “Mama.” The boy comes into the room. No shoes. A thin shirt. Rose wonders if he has winter clothes. A day like this calls for a sweater to cover those thin arms. The cast is a total mess. Someone has let the boy loose with a box of markers.

  “I want a muffin,” he says. He gives Rose a shy smile.

  “Coming right up,” Opal says.

  “Can I eat in my tent?” he asks.

  “Sure can, bud.” She turns to Rose. “He’s got this tent he set up in the living room. He likes to eat inside.”

  “I see,” Rose says. That will lead to crumbs all over the house.

  While Opal gets the boy a muffin, Rose notices a ballerina doll sitting on the counter. “Is that one of the dolls you make?” she asks when the boy has left.