Entering Normal

by Anne Leclaire

  “Aw, Ma,” Todd said when she aimed the lens at him. But he smiled, and she caught him at that moment, lit with the late summer sun, hands palm up, tennis balls suspended in midair, as if hung by strings from heaven. One second of one minute of one hour in his life. Time enough to take a picture. Time, under glass.

  She rises, places the frame back on the dresser top. She wishes she could talk to Ned. She would like to ask him if he remembers that cookout. If he recalls how Todd kept five tennis balls in the air, flipping them from left hand to right, from right hand into the air, around and around until it made you dizzy just watching. Where had he learned to do that? What does Ned remember of that day?

  Why can’t they ever talk about what matters? Has she tried? Has she tried hard enough?

  The trouble with secrets is how they keep you separate. She has kept from Ned all the things that have happened to her in the past months. How she lied for Opal at the hospital. How in that class she wrote all the things she felt about Todd’s death. How a magazine wanted to publish her piece in a special edition. How a mole on her stomach had been itching since last Fall and she had gone by bus to Springfield to a doctor to have it biopsied. How afterward, she had gone to Todd’s grave and then decided to let the magazine publish the article. And now the phone call with the news that the biopsy proved negative. All these secrets built on the biggest one of all: She refused to let Todd take her car the day of the accident, and if she hadn’t he would probably be alive today. Some mistakes are both simple and huge.

  Now she wishes she had told him about the biopsy so she could share the news that the mole was benign. But it’s too late to tell him. He would be angry that she hadn’t told him earlier. She has missed the chance to do him good. Still, she’ll make a special dinner. Swiss steak with mashed potatoes. There’s time to get to the market and pick up a nice piece of meat. Lately he’s not had much of an appetite when he comes home from the station.

  When the phone rings again, she answers at once, sure it is Ned, he is so in her mind. Opal’s rubbing off on her.

  “Mrs. Nelson?” an unfamiliar voice says.

  “Yes,” she says, guardedly. There should be a law against these telephone solicitors.

  “Mrs. Nelson, this is Helen Blake. I work in Admissions over at Mercy Memorial. Your husband Edward has been brought into emergency. We’re in the process of admitting him now.”

  An accident, Rose thinks. The lift. She has never trusted that thing. Never. She pictures Ned crushed beneath it.

  “Is he badly hurt?”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Nelson. I just want to tell you he’s being admitted. The doctors are with him. You can see him when you arrive. Get a friend to drive you, okay?”

  Rose grabs her purse and heads over to get Opal. As she crosses the lawn, she begins negotiations with God. She wonders if He minds that she no longer believes in Him. She wonders if God will believe her if she says she repents of her lies.

  Opal doesn’t even take time to wash her hands.

  “I’ve never trusted that lift,” Rose tells her over and over all the way to Mercy. “Never.”

  “MRS. ROSE NELSON,” SHE TELLS THE WOMAN AT ADMISSIONS. “Someone phoned me. My husband has been admitted.”

  “His name?”

  “Nelson. Ned Nelson.”

  “We have an Edward Nelson.”

  “That’s him.” No one has called him Edward since his mother died.

  “He’s in North Three. Coronary Care Unit.”

  She is so unprepared for this information the woman might as well have been speaking Swahili. Coronary Care Unit? For an accident?

  “There’s some mistake.”

  “How do we get there?” Opal says.

  “Take the elevator to the third floor and follow the green arrows.” She hands them a printed card with directions. “Someone at the nurse’s station there will be able to help you.”

  “What did she say?” she says to Opal.

  Opal repeats the directions, then takes her arm, leads her to the elevators.

  “He’s just been brought in,” a nurse tells her when they get there, shutting off Rose’s questions. “Give us five minutes to get him stabilized. ” She points to a room at the end of the corridor. “Have a seat in the visitors’ lounge, and a doctor will be with you shortly.”

  The lounge is empty except for a hollow-eyed woman staring at a television set. The volume is on mute. She does not look up when Rose and Opal enter.

  Rose is grateful for Opal, for the soil-stained fingers that are now interlaced with her own. “It’s a mistake,” she says. Of course it’s a mistake. A huge mistake. If you don’t count an occasional cold, Ned has never been sick a day in his bed. Has never been in the hospital. Has never had his tonsils out, for heaven’s sake. Or appendicitis. He’s only fifty-seven.

  Another nurse approaches.

  “Can I see him now? What’s wrong? Why is he here in Coronary Care?”

  “Your husband has had a coronary episode. Right now he’s stable. The doctor will explain everything.”

  “When can I see him?” Episode. That doesn’t sound too bad. Like an interjection in a story.

  “Soon. In the meantime, I have a few questions.” She holds her pen over the clipboard.

  “How old is Edward?”

  “Ned,” she says. “He’s called Ned.”

  “How old is Ned?”

  “Fifty-seven.”

  “You’re his wife?”

  Of course she’s his wife. Don’t these people listen? She’s already said that. “Yes.”

  “Do you have children?”

  She falls silent. Opal takes over.

  “One. A son.”

  “And where does he live?

  Rose stares at the television. A newscast. A man staring out at her, mouth moving, no words.

  “In her heart,” Opal says. “He lives in her heart.”

  The nurse, for the moment, is silenced.

  In her heart. Rose tightens her fingers around Opal’s.

  “When can she see her husband?” Opal says. “They told us five minutes, and it’s been fifteen. What’s going on?”

  “And you are?”

  “Her niece,” Opal says, the lie rolling off her tongue without hesitation.

  “Mrs. Nelson?”

  This doctor looks too young to have finished college, let alone medical school.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Dr. Richards.” He holds out a hand that Rose ignores.

  “What’s wrong with my husband?”

  “He’s had a myocardiac arrest, but he’s stabilized now.”

  Myocardiac arrest. “You mean a heart attack?” Dear God. An episode, the nurse had said. Myocardiac arrest is no episode. “Will he be all right?”

  “It looks good. We’re waiting for the enzyme test results. Would you like to see him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Five minutes. You can see him for five minutes.”

  Suddenly she is scared.

  “It’ll be all right,” Opal whispers.

  Rose follows the doctor to Ned’s room.

  He is sitting up in bed, plastic tubes running from his nose. He is hitched up to a monitor. An intravenous tube drips a colorless fluid into the vein in his right arm. “Hi, Rose,” he says.

  “Oh, Ned.” She starts to cry. She wants to kiss him but is afraid she will disturb the tubes in his nose. She squeezes his hand.

  “Hey,” he says. “Hey, Rosie. Don’t cry.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “I’m fine,” he says. “Look.” He lifts his left arm and flexes it, making a muscle with his biceps and pointing his finger out, mimicking a body builder. “Which way to the beach?” he says. It’s an old joke from their courtship.

  The monitor emits sharp fast beeps.

  “Dear God.” Rose looks around for help.

  A nurse bustles in. Ned lowers his arm, looks sheepish.

  “You better go,” she tells Rose.
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  Fifteen minutes pass before she is again permitted to see him. She tiptoes in, as if even her footsteps will alert that monitor, set it off again. She has promised herself she won’t cry, but the tears seep out.

  “Rosie, Rosie,” he whispers.

  She pulls her chair close to his bed, rests her head in the crook of his shoulder. He winces, and she draws away. He pulls her head back. “That’s nice,” he says.

  She stays there, quiet, listening to his heart, his lovely steady heartbeat. With her other ear she hears the sound of the monitor. Stereophonic sound. She giggles, tells him what’s funny when he asks.

  “I love you,” she says.

  “I love you too, Rosie. I always have.”

  When she returns to the lounge, Opal has ordered a sandwich for her. Coffee. She is surprised to find she is hungry, amazed to find it is after eight.

  The shifts change. A new nurse tends to Ned. Another one sits at the desk watching the monitors. Rose takes an immediate, illogical dislike to this one.

  “Go home,” the nurse says. “We’ll call you if there is any change.”

  “Do what the hell you want to do,” Opal says. “Don’t let them boss you around.”

  She decides to stay. Why would she want to be anywhere else? Opal stays with her.

  Around eleven, she finally believes it will be safe to leave Ned for the night.

  “Is he asleep right now?”

  The nurse checks a monitor. “He just woke up.”

  “Can I go in to say good-bye?”

  “Five minutes. Sleep is the best thing for him now.”

  “Ned? Honey? It’s Rose.”

  “Jesus, Rosie, I know that. I had a heart attack, not amnesia.”

  She kisses his cheek, rough with a day’s growth of whiskers. She makes a mental note to bring him a razor.

  “I’m going home now. I’ll be back in the morning.”

  “Okay. That’s good.”

  “Oh, Ned,” she says. “Are you scared?”

  “No.”

  “Honest?” She can’t believe this. “I am.”

  “Rosie,” he says, “there’s nothing to be scared of.”

  She forces herself to say the word. “Death. I’m afraid you’re going to die.”

  “Death is just the next big adventure.”

  “Don’t you say that,” Rose says. “Don’t you say that. It’s not.” Don’t you leave me, she wants to say.

  She is shouting and the nurse comes, makes her leave.

  Outside in the corridor, she apologizes. “Let me go back. I won’t get upset.”

  “You’re tired. Go home. Get some sleep. He’ll need you to be rested. Come back in the morning. He’ll be here. I promise.”

  As if anyone can ever promise anything like that.

  AS THEY CROSS THE LOBBY, A WOMAN RISES FROM A CHAIR SET in the shadows. “Rose?” she says.

  It takes her a moment to recognize Trudy.

  “Yes.” What the hell is she doing here?

  “How is Ned? They wouldn’t let me come up. Only family.”

  “He’s sleeping. He’s had a heart attack.”

  “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “He was at my house. He gave me a ride home.”

  A ride home? Ned gave Trudy a ride home?

  “It all happened so quick. At first he thought it was indigestion from the pie. You know how he stops by every afternoon after work for a cup of coffee and piece of pie.”

  No. She doesn’t know. Every day. At Trudy’s. Without her knowing.

  “His truck is at my place. I’ve taken the keys. I can drive it over to the station in the morning.”

  Ned was with Trudy?

  “No need for that,” Rose says. “I’ll get it tonight. Opal can drop me off.”

  The truck is pulled halfway up Trudy’s drive. Rose hoists herself into the cab. The steering wheel is gritty beneath her fingers. The cab smells faintly of smoke. She jams the keys into the ignition, turns the engine. She has forgotten to depress the clutch, and the pickup lurches forward and stalls. She lowers her head to the wheel, fighting tears. Trudy is watching from the stoop. Rose tightens her jaw, stomps on the clutch, and tries again. Slowly she edges down the drive. It is the first time in five years she has driven.

  Beneath the tires she feels the shift of the earth. A tectonic shifting.

  CHAPTER 36

  OPAL

  THE PHONE WAKES OPAL, AND EVEN HALF CAUGHT IN slumber she thinks, Zack. She rolls over and grabs the receiver. “Opal?”

  It’s Ty. Before her mind can fully waken, her body softens, opens to desire.

  “Hi.” She sits up, tents the sheet around her nude body.

  “How are you? How’s Zack?”

  “I’m fine. We’re fine.” She doesn’t tell him that Zack is visiting Billy. That she misses her son so much she can barely eat, that she has lost five pounds, that she can count her ribs just looking in the mirror. If she loses Zack, really loses him—impossible, her mind shrieks—she will shrink and die.

  “I’ve been thinking of you.”

  She catches her breath, releases it in a long exhale.

  “Hardly a day goes by when I don’t,” he says.

  No sense following that line of conversation. It’s a dead end. Over. Done. Her mind knows this. Her body just hasn’t gotten the news yet. “How did the taping go in Cambridge?”

  “Not bad.” He inhales, pauses. “Opal, I want to see you. Can I? Can I see you?”

  She closes her eyes. Just once—once—she wishes something wonderful could happen to her without cost. Something perfect that she doesn’t have to pay for. “Not possible.”

  “Why? Because I was arrested years ago? Because I made a mistake? Christ, Opal, even the judge didn’t take that seriously. I mean, he denied the restraining order, right? He wasn’t the one who said I can’t see you. Ask Ned—he’ll tell you I’m dependable.”

  Shit. Ned. The hospital. “Have you heard about Ned?”

  “Ned? No. What about him?”

  “He’s in the hospital. Heart attack.”

  “Christ, is he all right?”

  “He’s in the coronary unit. He’s—” What do they call it? Stable? “He’s stable.”

  “How’s Rose?”

  “Rose is okay.” As okay as anyone could be, Opal supposes.

  “Is anyone with her?”

  “I’m going over as soon as we hang up.”

  “And Ned’s in the hospital? Can he have visitors?”

  “I don’t think so. Just family.”

  “Tell Rose I asked, okay? Tell her to call me if there’s anything I can do. Tell her not to worry about the garage. I’ll go down and open up, finish up the jobs. Have her tell Ned not to worry about that stuff.”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  “Opal?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Will you call me sometimes? Let me know how things are going?”

  “What’s the point?”

  “The point is I care. The point is after everything is settled, maybe there’ll still be a chance for us. So will you? Call me?”

  Will she? Can she? “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  ROSE ISN’T DRESSED. HER GLASSES ARE SMUDGED. SHE LOOKS awful, like she didn’t get much sleep.

  “Am I too early?”

  “No. Come on in.” Rose looks down at her bathrobe, starts to say something and stops. “Coffee?” she asks.

  “I’ll get it,” Opal says. She fills a cup, holds the pot up toward Rose in question.

  “Thanks. Milk’s in the fridge.”

  “Ty called.” Opal pulls up a chair. There are only two at the table. She must be sitting in Ned’s. “He said not to worry, he’ll take care of things at the station. He said to be sure and tell Ned that, so he won’t worry.” Rose has the dazed look of someone who’s been in an accident. Opal is not certain she’s listening. “Have you heard anything this morning?”

  “I called the hospital about
an hour ago. They said he was resting comfortably. Visiting hours start at ten.”

  “I’ll take you,” Opal says.

  “You don’t have to. I’ve got Ned’s truck.”

  “I want to.”

  “You’ve got work.”

  “I don’t go in until one. Please, let me.”

  “I don’t want to be a bother.”

  “No bother. It will help take my mind off Zack.”

  Rose looks up, eyes alive. “How is he?”

  “Who the hell knows?” Opal feels anger rise. “Half the time I phone there’s no answer. It’s driving me crazy. I don’t know how I’m going to get through another week of it. I keep wondering, does Billy know he likes macaroni for breakfast? Or that he can’t sleep without Tigger? Or that you have to read him a story every night before he goes to bed? Or that he worries about things like where birds go when they die? Shit, I’m sorry. You’ve got enough on your mind without hearing about my problems.”

  A thunk sounds on the porch. “The paper,” Rose says. She crosses to the door and retrieves the Daily News. “Ned loves the sports pages. He has to read them every morning. It’s like a religion with him.” She stops short. “Do you think they’ll let me bring it in to him?”

  “Sure,” Opal says. The coffee is making her have to pee. “Can I use the bathroom?”

  “Upstairs. Second door on the left.” Rose opens to the sports page. “The Red Sox won,” she reports. “That will make Ned happy.”

  From the small window in the upstairs bath, Opal looks down on her house. There’s a good view from here. You can see everything. Suddenly she remembers that day she and Ty had been making out on the lawn. Him on top, straddling her. Rose sure must have gotten an eyeful that day. She turns from the window, wishing it were that easy to excise memories of Ty from her mind.

  She pees, washes up, then retraces her steps down the hall. As she passes a doorway, she peers in. Todd’s, she guesses. It looks like he still lives here. A shell of a room, waiting for a ghost.