Like Normal People

by Karen Bender

  But the moment Ella walked into the Treasure Trove, she felt she did not belong. The door was flanked by two black Grecian columns, and inside was a vast array of extravagant objects that she had never before seen. Porcelain vases, painted with delicate, gilt-leaved roses, stood atop lit stands. There were jade dogs and horses and rabbits and domed chests encrusted with purple stones. There were gentlemen with bowlers and ladies in silk dresses and flowered hats. Above, a huge teardrop chandelier sparkled like frozen raindrops. Ella kept her hands out of her pockets, to show everyone that she was not a thief.

  “Reilly sent you?” asked Marvin. He had a strange accent, almost British but not quite. His thin face with fine cheekbones made him appear knowledgeable in matters of taste. Ella nodded.

  “Let’s get a look at you,” he said.

  She turned around, arms held out, and tried to smile. He looked her over. “What do you think of all this?” he asked her, gesturing to the room.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. Her voice was thick with feeling.

  “Fine,” he said. His accent slid a little; it sounded almost like hers. “We’ll fit you up in a uniform. Be here tomorrow at nine.”

  And just like that, he trusted her to come in every morning and dust off the figures made of jade or ivory or gold; he trusted her to sell the precious objects to the customers. She wore a uniform, a forest-green, cap-sleeved blouse and a calf-length skirt. On one side of her collar was a nametag, on the other, a sparkling rhinestone pin with the initials JM for Johnson Massey. Ella did not think the pin’s jewels were real, but she also did not want anyone to tell her they were not.

  She memorized everything Marvin told her about the objects; the information seemed culled from the encyclopedia: Jade is much prized in the Orient. Different methods for carving jade are used in China and Japan. When she was tired, she sometimes made up her own facts. “This fine chest stored dishes in the castle of King Howard the Fourth,” she said. She loved how the customers nodded, listening, how vulnerable they seemed, examining the treasures in their careful hands.

  Lou said that he knew almost the minute he saw her that he wanted to marry her, but it took her a year to decide. By then she was twenty-one, and her mother was pressing her for a decision. “Better do it quick,” she told Ella, “or you’ll be left on the shelf.”

  Lou had wandered into the Treasure Trove by accident. She came up behind him and asked, “May I help you?” He turned around and saw her. He removed his hat. “I’m just a salesgirl,” she said. “You can put your hat—”

  “You’re Ella,” he said, reading her nametag. “A pleasure to meet you. I’m Lou.” He gazed at her. “I’m searching for a gift from”—he looked around—“the Fourth Prussian Dynasty.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “From 1834 to 1857. A great era in history. A time of great riches. Beautiful queens.” His voice echoed strangely. She could not recall anything about the Fourth Prussian Dynasty. “Ella,” Lou said, “show me what you have.”

  They strolled past the delicate, glimmering objects. There were no other customers or salesgirls in the store just then. He walked close to her, his shoulders, hunched, assuming a posture of protectiveness.

  “Prussia,” she said, hoping for more help from him.

  “I’d say the year 1852.”

  She gazed around the room, and a feeling of boldness came over her. “This,” she said, pointing to a gold grandfather clock. “This is from that time.”

  He smiled, stepped up to the clock, and tapped the surface with his knuckles. His face went soft with approval. “It is,” he said. Ella stepped back, surprised. The clock was certainly not from the Fourth Prussian Dynasty, whenever that was. Each understood that the other was lying. The light in the room seemed to brighten. “It chimed to call them to dinner,” he said.

  “I think so,” she said. A puff of glee burst in her chest.

  They walked around the room, deciding that almost all the objects must be from the Fourth Prussian Dynasty. “This,” announced Lou, gripping a vase dangerously by its neck, “held the bracelets that belonged to Edwina, the Prussian princess.”

  “No,” Ella said, “that was for her earrings. Her bracelets”—she tapped a carved ivory tusk—“hung on this.”

  Now Ella began to feel a little dizzy. He walked close to her, as though they were already intimate, and when she took her place behind the counter, he seemed lost. He bought the least expensive item in the room—a tiny jade rabbit—and appeared stunned to have purchased anything. “Thank you very much, Ella,” he said, in a puzzled way, clutching the store’s box. “Thank you for helping me today—” And then, as though afraid of what he might say next, he dashed out of the store.

  A few days later, as she came through the glass doors of Johnson Massey, she noticed Lou standing by the store windows. He was moving his hat restlessly from hand to hand; when he saw her, he quickly put it on. “Ella,” he said. His face was stern with purpose. “I’m Lou.”

  It was a fall day, and the sky was pale with cold. His hands looked clumsy and large in brown mittens. “Hello,” he said. His breath curled in the chill air. “What a lovely pin,” he said, looking at the sparkling JM pin on her collar.

  “I think they’re diamonds,” she burst out, and then stopped, embarrassed.

  He smiled, so she knew that he knew the stones could not be diamonds. They began to walk together, toward nowhere. The air between them brimmed with a feeling that was not yet love, but a stubborn, reckless sense that they were bound by something larger than themselves. Around them, the city’s cold was savage. The afternoon seemed to part before them. “If you’re still looking for presents,” she said, knowing that he wasn’t, “Sophia can help—”

  “I have something for you,” he blurted. They stopped. Crowds melted around them. He held out a package, badly wrapped.

  It was easy to accept the present; she was curious. She unwound the tissue and found the jade rabbit she had sold him. She stared at him, confused.

  “There was no Fourth Prussian Dynasty,” she said. She’d looked it up in Marvin’s encyclopedia.

  “No?” He tried to laugh. His face was as open as a child’s. “But you were so . . . helpful. I wanted to give it to you.”

  She touched the rabbit’s ears. She had never owned anything from the Treasure Trove.

  “Have dinner with me,” he said. The words blossomed from a tender place inside him. He stepped back a little. There was a brisk gust of wind, and his coat flapped around him.

  There was no one else who wanted her then, and she began to look forward to seeing Lou walk through the Grecian columns of the Treasure Trove. Soon he was visiting her several times a week. She was cautious, but she liked him, partly because the other girls did. They hovered around him, laughing at his jokes, the way he made fun of the gaudiest, most grotesque objects. “What fool would buy this?” he said, lifting a huge, gilt ashtray with cupids balanced on the edge. The girls shrieked with laughter. Ella watched the salesgirls change lipstick, looking for the one color that would make him love them. They acted like men when they flirted, slapping him playfully, calling him “mister” or “kid,” as though that gave them new rights to him. They smiled coldly at Ella. She did not understand her claim on him. She began to love him almost to appease her colleagues.

  Ella and Lou started to take walks when her shift ended. He was full of opinions, and he seemed so happy to be with her that she wanted to listen. He told her about the classes he’d taken in college; how he helped manage his mother’s suit store; how he’d read a great deal about California and wanted to live in a place that was always warm. Lou was full of jokes at the Treasure Trove, but when they were alone he had an earnest quality that told her he took her seriously. His admiration seemed to be part of him, like bone.

  He had money. That gave him confidence; he entered restaurants, stores, with none of her trepidation. She began to love the careful, greased slickness of his hair, gleaming like black
licorice, or the way he shook his coat on, commanding and sharp. He was educated; he read all the sections of a newspaper. He walked through the world as though he knew that he belonged in it.

  She remembered the moment she passed from lonely to loved. She was having dinner with Lou in a bright red booth at a diner in Brookline. She sat, anxious, straightening the fork on her napkin. The waitress brought her a piece of brisket. It wasn’t a fancy place, and the meat was too tough to cut. Her knife skidded from her hand to the floor.

  “They should take it back,” said Lou. “It should be more tender.”

  Ella felt embarrassed, responsible, somehow. “No, I like it this way,” Ella said.

  He looked at her. “Then let me try,” he said.

  Lou slid her plate over, pressed his fork deep into the meat, and carefully cut off a small piece. He held it up as though it were a jewel.

  “How’s this?” he asked.

  She stared at him. “Fine,” she said.

  He cut the rest of the meat into bite-sized pieces and set the plate back in front of her. “That should be better,” he said.

  It was wonderful, the way he’d cut the brisket for her. It was, somehow, the gesture she had been waiting for her whole life. Lou chewed his green beans. Ella stopped eating her brisket.

  Perhaps this was how life was supposed to be. At that moment Ella was so certain of her future, she did not feel she needed to do anything—to pick up her fork, drink her water. An odd happiness slowly filled her, and she knew that life would carry her to the next good place. She understood what love was.

  Ella remembered little about her wedding: the rabbi’s gray, acne-marked face, her ivory satin dress, paid for by Lou’s family, and the juicy red roast beef that they had also provided. At one point, she was held up in a small wooden chair, dozens of hands reaching for her, as though she were floating on a wild sea. She barely saw Lou during the party, until, bending through a flurry of rice as they left, she clasped his hand.

  A taxi took them to their hotel. They sat quietly in the back seat. She was married. Her heart had become a trumpet, trying to play a great new sound. The car stopped at the Hotel Essex, where Lou registered them as Mr. and Mrs. Lou Rose. It was that easy; that was who she was.

  She had so many questions, but they seemed too dangerous to ask. Why had he chosen her? And why had she chosen him? What made a person decide to marry another? Did a small thing push you over—the beautiful curve of a lip, or the startle of hair in the sun—and if you lost this thing, was the love forever gone?

  She had never been inside a hotel. The room had creamy walls and a ruby-red carpet. The room was like a regular bedroom, but one that had somehow never been occupied. It had dark blue linen draperies, an enormous, tidy bed. A bottle of champagne sat in a silver bucket. The room smelled clean, antiseptic. Ella wanted to touch everything. She moved all around, examining the night table, opening and closing the drawers. Lou followed her. “Let me introduce my wife to the dresser,” he said. His voice was hoarse. “Let me introduce my wife to the lamp . . .”

  The word wife startled her; it was as though an intruder had entered the room. When she found fragrant squares of wrapped soap in the bathroom, Ella opened one. “It’s our first soap,” she said. “Hold out your hands.” He did; his palms were pale pink and delicate. Gently, in the scented lather, she washed their hands together. He dried his with the plush hotel towel. They went back to the bedroom, and Lou kissed her.

  It was all very fast. She wanted to be a good bride, to be still as Lou unzipped her dress and pushed it down her shoulders, but she also wanted to kiss back. She stepped out of her dress in one quick, determined motion. He unhooked her bra and took her breasts into his hands. No man had ever touched her breasts. It was an astounding sight, her breasts, pale and soft, in his hands. It seemed too easy, too calm.

  “You’re beautiful,” he murmured.

  She stood in her slip, wanting more words. She heard only his breath, shallow, quickening. He snapped off the light and gently guided her onto the bed. The gold bands on their fingers gleamed, ghostly, in the darkness, as though to show they belonged to the same club. His fingertips traced her skin from her hair down the curve of her back, over the inside of her thigh. She felt utterly naked and she wanted him to touch her more. She was surprised at the rubbery quality of his fingers, surprised that she could feel the edge of his fingernail inside her. There was a loneliness that she had not expected. She smoothed her hands over his warm, silky skin, wanting to touch far more than his body.

  “Ella,” he whispered. Their breath was like a hushed conversation. She wrapped her arms around him. She was aware of the cotton sheet below her and the clock ticking on the wall and his breath, so fast, doglike. She pressed her forehead to his shoulder, waiting for whatever love this act created.

  Then he stopped.

  Lou rolled off her and pushed his face into the pillow. Ella looked at his dark hair, his ear. His ear was so close to her lips, she wanted to shout and shout into it, but she did not know what she would say.

  He reached down and touched her private place with his finger. She flinched. His finger was bloody.

  “Are you all right?”

  He dabbed her with the blanket. There wasn’t much blood. He tucked the blankets around their shoulders and they were face to face in bed, like cold children.

  “Well, my love,” Lou said, “we’re married.”

  They blinked into the brackish, honeyed smell of each other’s breath.

  Lou fell asleep. Ella watched him as he slept soundly. She was married; this was a thought she held alone.

  Suddenly, she understood how no one completely owned anyone else in the world. Every person wanted an exclusive hand on the beloved. A wife owned her husband differently from the way his mother did, or his daughter. Ella had hoped that her love would be more selfish—a love that would locate herself and Lou completely in this dark together, alone.

  That was the wife’s claim to ownership: the privilege of being touched. Its secret nature bothered her; she wished she could describe it to the world. But neither his mother, nor hers, would choose to hear about it. And Lou belonged, truly, to neither of them. If he died, he would separate into two different people in their dreams.

  Her heart burned with enormous love and grief. She was married. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw her wedding dress, stiff and opalescent in the deep blue light. The dress had been left in such a way that it looked as if it had fallen and was trying, very delicately, to stand up.

  It took nothing to send them to California: a cramped attic apartment; the fact that she could not help Lou open a shoe store, as she had said; a newspaper article that said homes in Los Angeles were cheap.

  It was Lou who suggested the idea, and it seemed immediately right to Ella. It was a way finally to become a true member of her family—to leave them the way they had left their country, two decades before.

  It was 1926. They moved west, a new bride and groom, in a used Ford. Gripping hands, Ella and Lou watched as each state fell away behind them, revealing the vast country, alternately brown or verdant beneath the springtime sun.

  Four

  A DUSTY RED palisade descended from the highway, and on the other side of it was Lahambra Beach. The bus slid down the off ramp, approaching the beach. A faint, rose-colored glow hovered above the Pacific Ocean. Shelley could see a swarm of half-naked people gathered by the water. They were lying on towels or zooming down the bike path on roller skates or jumping up and down by a volleyball net. The surf began at the north end of the beach and extended south like a long, white zipper undoing the sea.

  They had been on the bus for forty minutes. Lena pressed her face to the window. She had done this so frequently and fiercely during the ride that her forehead bore a red mark. All during the ride, she had been quietly giggling, but she did not tell Shelley of her stream of thoughts. But now, as they passed a large Sav-on on the street across from the beach, Lena sat up
. “Look,” she exclaimed, pointing to the store. “It’s the same sign.”

  Lena had been watching other passengers reach up and pull the wire running above the window when they wanted to get off the bus. Her own fingertips had crept along the wire, but never hard enough to make a sound. Now, Lena reached up and firmly yanked it. “Dare!” she said to Shelley. “Get off!” She scrambled up to the front, and Shelley followed. The driver brought the bus to a stop; he, too, seemed to believe that they had reached their destination. The two of them jumped off.

  The air was new here, coated with gasoline and salt. The light shimmered in great, pale sheets, filled with sheer cascades of green and blue. Cars formed a slow, endless caravan down the highway. They were dusty with sunlight and sand, as though they had been driven through a desert. The loud voices of Donna Summer and the Bee Gees and the Eagles made their way out the different car windows, engaged in their own important discussion. Some of the drivers had pickup trucks, and bare-chested boys and bikini’d girls lounged in the open backs. They tipped back beers or lifted their faces to the sun; there was a lazy, languorous look to them, like that of seals basking on rocks.

  Shelley and Lena were in a new and unknown land. Shelley’s breath was coming quickly, almost in sobs; the sound of her emotion surprised her. She held her breath for a second to stop that sound. There was a penetrating quiet here, under the noise of the singers, under the roar of the sea.

  Shelley had known Lena only in four places. She had seen Lena and Bob at her parents’ house, at her grandmother’s house, at Panorama Village, and at the International House of Pancakes, where her parents sometimes took them for lunch. She had never seen Lena by herself in the world. Lena was clasping her arms against her chest; the wind of the cars from the highway fluttered her housecoat. Her eyes were shut and her face scrunched up in concentration; it was as if she was imagining herself as a beach person, as someone who could exist here.