Nearly Normal

by Cea Sunrise Person

  “Really,” Grandma Jeanne said with a smile. “All you have to do is make it home, and you’ll have some nice new shoes to look forward to.”

  Papa Dick nodded. “Now let’s get going. We don’t have time to fool around.”

  I did a little dance on the spot and started walking again. New rabbit moccasins, Mom waiting for me at home and caribou for dinner! I was pretty sure I was the happiest kid in the whole world.

  Chapter 2

  2003

  Vancouver

  When James and I got married, a baby was not in the plan. James already had a teenaged daughter from an early relationship, and though when I was little I’d dreamed of having a baby girl, that dream had faded completely in adulthood. It took time for me to realize that this change was likely the result of years of the mother–daughter role reversal I’d experienced with Mom, but my desire for a baby had not returned. But at the age of thirty-four, biology spoke to me in a voice louder than anything I’d ever experienced, drowning out logic and reason. Between one day and the next, the thought was there, as sudden and insistent as if a microchip had been inserted into my brain.

  I want a baby, I thought as I swung my legs out of bed one morning.

  What?

  I gave it time. Refusing to let my usual impatience run the show, I convinced myself it must be a phase. Not that it mattered much—whatever the case, I was pretty certain I knew what James’s answer would be. Not only did I know his feelings on the topic, but also in our five years together, I’d come to believe that his drive to find professional success came above all else.

  Two months later, when the microchip was still giving off its signal approximately every three minutes of my waking life, I knew I needed to talk to someone about it. Since Mom was the only person in my life who’d known me when I was younger and wanted a baby, I decided on her. She and I didn’t chat much, partly because my relationship with her always made me feel like a failure. I seemed to be the lowest rung on her ladder of priorities, like everything she was doing despite her vows of love to me—forgetting my birthday, only visiting me when it was convenient for her boyfriend (like when they were driving through town, for example), even trying to cure her spreading cancer with herbs—was an insult to me. And yet I didn’t seem to possess enough courage or bitterness or principled conviction to cut her from my life. So instead we existed in a place of absolute inauthenticity, chatting every few months about this or that without sharing anything meaningful. Maybe one day, I thought, something would matter enough to bring us together again.

  “A baby? Darling, that’s wonderful! You’d be an amazing mother,” she said, her voice airy with pot smoke when I delivered my eventless news. “And about time. I’ve been waiting for you to have one since you were a teenager.”

  I rolled my eyes in annoyance. “No, it’s not wonderful. James will never agree to it. And it’s not like . . .”

  “What?”

  “Well, it’s not like we’re doing really great or anything.”

  It was the first time I’d admitted this truth out loud. Our little house in suburbia had not cured my homesickness, nor had it done anything to further unite James and me. His company seemed to be taking off, which was positive, but it meant our dinner conversations now revolved mostly around how I was going to get my business off the ground. We both knew he was bound for huge success, but the same wasn’t obvious of me. I knew his insistence on my prosperity should have motivated me—after all, he was older, wiser and more experienced in entrepreneurship than me, and there was nothing I craved more than his approval. And I recognized that no one in my life had ever had expectations of how I should behave or what I should achieve—certainly not my mother or other family members—so it stood to reason that I had much to learn from my husband. All the same, I found myself wishing for a more defined separation of career and marriage.

  The saving grace was that at least I’d finally decided on my second career. Inspiration had struck one day when I was putting on a bikini to go to the pool. I had a collection of swimsuits from around the globe acquired during my modelling days, and it hit me just how ridiculously happy those two pieces of pretty fabric made me. What I’d seen in Vancouver stores had left me wanting, so I had signed up for a pattern-making course and started sewing samples on my home machine. My life had purpose now, though it often seemed I was feeling my way through a dark room full of obstacles; I had no idea how to start a business, especially one as complex as clothing design. More than that, I sometimes felt like I’d plucked my career from a tree of desperation just to prove to James that I was moving forward. Shortly after I made the decision to start that business, I’d fallen asleep at the wheel and totalled my car. I’d broken my hand and had to spend the next two months cutting, pinning, sewing and doing graphic design and computer tasks one-handed. But if I saw it as a sign of anything, it was that as with modelling, I’d have to work extra hard to attain my goal.

  Over the phone, I could hear Mom clanging pots around, emptying the dishwasher.

  “Really?” she said to me. “You’re not happy?”

  I sighed. “Just . . . we’re very different. We seem to want different things.”

  “Most men do. I’ve never met one who wanted what I did.”

  I snorted, regretting the words I said even as they tumbled out. “Mom, you’ve never chosen a man in your life. You just let yourself get picked, no matter how incompatible you might be. Just look at who you’re with right now.”

  “Cea—”

  “What? This is a little different, okay?”

  “Is it?” she asked with uncharacteristic sharpness. “Look at you. You could have any man in the world, and you’re telling me you’re unhappy. So why did you pick James?”

  I didn’t have an answer for her, at least not one that made sense to me, and that unsettled me more than anything. I finally hung up the phone, pissed off, because I still felt like my mother was to blame for many of my bad choices. How was I supposed to choose a suitable life partner after what she’d modelled to me as a child? My anger at her was always just below my calm surface, and I didn’t want to feel like that anymore. I wanted to be healed of my past, to feel responsible for my own happiness, but I didn’t. I’d read every self-help book on the market, gone through therapy twice, medicated for years with antidepressants. It wasn’t that I felt like a victim; it was just that I was so tired of being a survivor.

  Each day, my microchip beeped a little louder. As I went about my work, I imagined a baby playing at my feet, eating in a high chair, reaching tiny arms up to be held. Suddenly it seemed like every other woman I saw was pregnant. Finally I could take it no more. This was not a phase; four months had passed since the morning I’d woken up with a baby on my brain. I’d already tried the obvious with James—casually bringing up baby tidbits, pointing out cute pictures—but he wasn’t biting. So I would talk to him. He was my husband, after all—surely I could share such a natural female urge with him.

  “So it looks like more and more of my friends are hopping on the baby train,” I said to him one night at dinner, trying to look casual as I twirled spaghetti around my fork. “Even some of my modelling friends now. I heard from Heather this morning.”

  “Mm.”

  I worded the request in my head and plowed on. “Yeah. And, I mean, I never thought I’d say this, but I guess . . . well . . . I kind of feel like maybe I want one too. I mean, not kind of, but actually kind of a lot. Want a baby a lot, I mean.” I cringed. It had come out all wrong—inarticulate, messy, a little desperate.

  James shrugged. “Nicole just had a baby,” he said, referring to one of my close friends. “And you’ve never really been around one before, right? It’s probably just got your hormones going a bit.”

  I nodded. “That would make sense, except it’s been a few months now, and the feeling’s not going away. In fact it’s getting worse.” I brought my fingers to my temples and continued before he could respond. “Listen, I don’t l
ike this either, you know? I feel a little betrayed by own body. It’s like my head would happily say no, but my body won’t let me. Like it’s taken my brain prisoner or something.”

  He grinned then took a long drink from his water glass and set it down. “I think we need to keep our long-term goals in mind.”

  “We will! This doesn’t change our career plans.”

  “I think you can say that, but you don’t really understand what the reality will be. Babies are a ton of work.”

  My shoulders slumped. It was a point I couldn’t argue—after all, he’d already had one.

  My urge to reproduce turned me into a woman I barely recognized—weepy, rash, willing to bargain anything to get what I wanted. I returned to my swimsuits with new determination, thinking that my business would eventually either replace my desperate need or become successful enough that James would have to give me what I wanted. My will to succeed became relentless, often driving me to sit at my sewing machine or computer through the night. Sometimes in the middle of a task, I’d start crying uncontrollably. I didn’t doubt that my microchip was the cause of it, but I also felt besieged by an acute loneliness, because I knew I couldn’t talk to my husband about the most pressing matter in my life.

  That I finally got my way nearly a year later is a testament to the power of biology, persistence and James’s willingness to try to make me happy. When he relented I threw my arms around him, filled with a love I hadn’t felt for him since our earliest days. But strangely, this did not give me renewed hope for our marriage. Rather I questioned, if only briefly, the ethics of bringing a child into the world with him when I knew that our relationship was most likely doomed to slide downhill from this moment on. But my ethics were no contest for my hormones.

  Should a baby actually materialize, the work of caring for it would be mostly on me, James warned me fairly, and I happily agreed. I’d heard countless times that raising a child was the hardest job in the world, but I didn’t believe it. I’d survived a childhood in the wilderness, my mother’s version of parenting, her crazy and lecherous boyfriends, the fashion industry, a failed marriage and my own start-up company. I would be a protective and attentive mother, nothing like my own had been, and it would be easy compared to everything I’d already been through.

  “Halifax?” I repeated incredulously, bouncing Avery on my hip. He rubbed at his eyes and started to whimper. He was over a year old and as fussy as the day was long. He was also still up several times each night, so between my work, caring for Avery, and my exhaustion, time passed in a foggy blur. Not that I cared much, because at least I had him. My son had filled my heart, and I could see that he’d filled James’s too. “Why there, of all places?”

  James shrugged and sank farther into the couch. “I don’t know. Why not? We need a new beginning.”

  My tummy fluttered anxiously. Though the idea of moving across the country to a city I’d never been to was daunting, it was also tempting. In this situation, I saw an uncomfortable truth about myself. I tended to take extreme measures to solve problems, action that was often disconnected from the problem itself. During a childhood marked by frequent moves and instability, I’d been taught to drop everything and run when things became too difficult. I’d done this often as an adult, and though it hadn’t always worked, at least it had made me feel like I was doing something. At least I hadn’t accepted stagnation or let failure sweep me into an open pit of depression—and right now, my life was definitely failing.

  I placed Avery on the floor amid a scatter of toys, and he immediately started to howl. James flinched. I picked up our son again and started bouncing him on my other hip. The look on my husband’s face scared me. Things weren’t going as planned at his company. CeaSwim was taking too long to get off the ground and costing us way too much money; after struggling through yet another batch of failed samples from a Canadian manufacturer, I’d had to take my business to China. And as it turned out, being a mother was the hardest thing I’d ever done. I would support my husband—of course I would—just as he had supported me in my need to have Avery. And really, what was the difference between living here or somewhere else? Because as much as I hated to admit it, even after seven years, Vancouver still didn’t feel like home.

  I sat down beside James and nursed Avery. James put his hand on my leg.

  “We’ll get through this,” he said. “I need you with me, I really do.”

  I put my hand on top of his. Being needed wasn’t the same as having my own needs met, but maybe that could change. And really, if I put my own needs first, how was I any different from my mother?

  “Okay,” I said quietly. “Let’s do it.”

  A month after we decided to move, I boarded an overnight flight to Halifax on a singular mission: to find us a house there in twenty-four hours. On the plane, I kept my mind occupied with celebrity gossip magazines, because the moment I thought about what I was doing, the insanity of it all began to ping around in my head. Moving across the entire country. A place neither my husband nor I had ever been to. A city that contained not a single friend or acquaintance or even business contact—besides Eileen the Realtor, of course, who had promised to meet me at the airport.

  Eileen turned out to be a delight, and she seemed to know better than to ask direct questions. She bought me breakfast, took me on a tour of the city and shared her deep connection to the place where she was born and raised. She assured me that my family would love it here too. After showing me five houses that didn’t work for one reason or another, she took me through a cute 1920s heritage place with three upstairs bedrooms. It was cottage-like, reminiscent of a home I’d once squatted in for several months with my mother and her boyfriend. I emailed James some photos and then went to find Eileen in the kitchen. She was standing at the sink, turning the tap on and off.

  “Water pressure’s not great.” She glanced up at me. “Might want to get a plumber in to check—”

  “Do you have the paperwork?” I asked.

  She looked surprised. “Well . . . yes. You’re sure about this? I mean . . . James wouldn’t want to see the house first?”

  I shook my head. “That’s not really an option. Anyway, this is just to get the ball rolling, right? Nothing will be final until he signs too. And the offer has to be accepted, of course.” I smiled extra hard, realizing how rash I must look to this woman. But what I couldn’t explain to Eileen, who’d never left the security of her hometown, was that this was all-too-familiar ground to me. At thirty-six years old, I had moved more than sixty times in my life. Of course, many of those moves had involved little more commitment than relocating camp when I was a child or unpacking my suitcase at another modelling apartment in my teens, but I’d also known the pressure of signing rental leases and, on three occasions, taking on a mortgage. I was making a decision the only way I knew how: by trying something out to see if it worked.

  Many would have called my process reckless, but if there was another way to go about finding answers, I didn’t know what it was. Weighing consequences for my actions had never been one of my strong points. I’d married two husbands with doubt in my heart, left a successful career behind in Europe on little more than a whim and had a baby knowing I’d need to simultaneously raise him and run my business from home. The Persons were famously bad at planning for the future—and was it any wonder? Live in the present. The past and future don’t exist, Papa Dick used to preach when I was a child, and it seemed that his words had had their desired effect on me.

  1975

  Kootenay Plains

  Apache’s tongue was as big as my face and as wet as a dishrag. I always let him lick my hand before I climbed way up on his giant back for a ride. Randall would lace his hands together to give my foot a boost, and then I would be on top of the world. There were six horses at the Indian camp, but Apache was everyone’s favourite, because he was the biggest and gentlest. His hide was black and white, kind of like a cow’s. I’d never seen a cow in real life before, but
I’d seen a picture of one in a book.

  Randall led Apache by the reins with one hand, his other arm around Mom’s waist. I could see Mom smile when she turned toward him. Apache rocked underneath me and shook his mane in the summer breeze. I was Cea Person, I was four years old, and I could ride a horse all by myself without a saddle. There was nothing in the world I loved more than horses, except maybe Suzie Doll and my family. Across the river at my tipi camp, I had my very own corral of stick horses. I rode them and played with them and made them pretty reins out of leather and feathers, and I’d even named one of them Apache. But he wasn’t as good as the real thing.

  Randall stopped and looked at me. “Do you want to hold the reins?”

  I nodded happily. He handed me the reins, and Apache put his head down to nip at the grass. Mom and Randall walked ahead a bit. Randall’s hair was even longer than Mom’s, hanging down his back in two black braids. Mom said he only let it out when he was being a medicine man, and I knew that was true, because he’d been a medicine man for me once when I couldn’t stop coughing. Randall had told me it was called whooping cough, and he’d made it go away by burning sweetgrass and telling the evil spirits to scat.

  Snowy mountains surrounded our meadow. Birds tweeted and called. The river rushed in the distance. Indian paintbrush and tiger lilies bloomed bright orange. I lay forward across Apache’s back, breathing in his straw-like smell. The sun shining down on my head made me feel sleepy.

  And then I was falling. Slipping to one side, and—wham! Flat on my back. My head hit the ground hard. I tried to yell, but my lungs were stuck. I stared up the sky and waved my arms and legs back and forth like a flipped-over beetle.

  Mom! I called in my mind, but nothing came out. I turned my head to look for her, but she was nowhere. Apache’s huge black nostrils swung above me. He lowered his head and touched my shoulder, then he blew on my face and whinnied. Suddenly Mom and Randall were charging out of the trees toward me. My lungs unstuck, and I heaved a giant breath.