Like Normal People

by Karen Bender

  “Well,” he said, and stopped.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “Um,” he said. “My wife.”

  “Go on,” she said.

  “Mmm,” he said. “Cold. I hate the cold.”

  The yellowed stucco snack stand glared in the dusk.

  “You will succeed,” she said. “I, Sequina, tell you to relinquish your fear. Throw away your sorrow and bring out your secrets. The world awaits your success.” Her voice rang, thin and sweet, in the silence.

  Ambrosio turned to her. There were tears in his eyes. She saw a hard swelling, like a tiny, upraised elephant trunk, under his unitard. He began to stroke her arm with a peculiar kind of tenderness. Her throat ached; no one had ever touched her this way before.

  Suddenly, there was no sense in the world. His face was dazed, like a baby’s. He clearly had not been listening to her.

  “Wait,” she said.

  He sat, mute, stroking her wrist. She jerked her arm away, grabbed the door handle, and pushed open the door.

  “Don’t go!” he said. He reached for her bare leg, but she swatted his hand away, got out, and slammed the door. She had just given him a back rub, and what happened! He’d become another animal, and she wondered now what would grow out of her.

  The clouds were sinking, brilliant and gold; soon they would blanket the beach in white fog, and everyone would wander through it, calling for someone to love. She was running across the parking lot, running back to Lena, holding out her arms.

  Her aunt wasn’t under the pier; she was standing beside it, her arms crossed over her chest, her housecoat fluttering in the low wind. When she saw Shelley, she dropped her arms but she did not move.

  Shelley ran across the soft sand. Now her hands were curled into hard little balls, and she was knocking threes ferociously against her hips. When she reached her aunt, she was breathing so hard that she couldn’t speak.

  “Sequina,” Lena said, grabbing her arms. “I waited and waited and waited! You took a long time.”

  She let Lena hold her up, because she was so tired. Her aunt was like an island she had paddled to for a long time. She felt Lena’s hands, her shoulders.

  “Something happened,” Shelley said.

  “What?”

  “I was”—she held her hands out for Lena to see—“I was in a car with a man. Look.” Her palms were pink and trembling and deceitful. She did not know what to tell Lena, but she remembered how the sun lit the lines of dirt on the Volkswagen’s windows, making them a dull silver, how the man’s shoulders felt soft, how the whole car seemed to wake up when he turned to her. There had been a strange feeling of closeness and a dinginess in the air. All of this pointed to one thing. “I think,” she said slowly, “I had a kind of sex. I don’t know what kind, but definitely sex.”

  Lena stepped back. “You did not,” she said.

  “I think I did.”

  “Did he kiss you?”

  “No.”

  “Did he touch this?” Lena pointed to her breast.

  “No.”

  “Did he go in and out?”

  “No!”

  “Then you didn’t,” Lena decided.

  “It was,” protested Shelley. It had to be. That was the only explanation for the way the air in the car became glassy, for the way the tiger on the cereal box seemed about to speak. “He was going to cry,” she said with wonder. “All I did was give him a backrub, and he was going to cry.”

  “You didn’t do it,” Lena said. “I did, but you didn’t.” Lena twisted her fine hair. “It felt good. Nobody cried.” She squinted. “Where are the hors d’oeuvres?” she asked.

  Shelley sank to her knees, trying to stop the trembling. “I didn’t get any,” she said.

  Lena knelt beside her and smoothed the girl’s hair out of her face. “Why not?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  Lena stared at her. “You can do everything,” she said.

  “I cannot,” said Shelley.

  “I think so,” said Lena. She sat back on her heels.

  Shelley pressed her hands to her thighs, trying to stop herself from doing the threes. Her heart was beating hard in her forehead, her hands. Finally, she pushed her fists into the sand and held them there.

  Ambrosio had not been who she had expected, and she could not keep herself from thinking about her uncle anymore. The beach held an unearthly quiet, as though someone had screamed once and stopped. Someone was missing from the world. The absence was behind the teenagers throwing Frisbees and beneath the water and below the sand and above the sheer gold clouds. Bob was gone; he had left her and Lena ragged children on the hot sand. She jumped up, but the hurt was both inside and out; she had no place to go to escape it.

  Lena stood up, too, and efficiently brushed off Shelley’s arms. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  Shelley couldn’t answer. Lena patted her head. “Now I want to walk on the pier,” she said.

  She pointed to the top of the pier, which stretched into the shining water. The pink and green lights were coming on in the game booths, food stands, the Ferris wheel. Dark waves crashed around the thick log supports that held it up and spray shimmered into the air.

  The pier looked like a very beautiful place. But Shelley felt all its loveliness denied her. Her uncle was missing from the world. She wished the gulls would slice holes in the sky, holes that would suck up everything on the beach, towels and cars and sunbathers and umbrellas. And herself. She wanted to disappear, because she did not know how to live here now.

  “I want you to go to the pier with me,” murmured Lena. She took Shelley’s hand, and the two of them walked down the beach.

  Shelley, Lena, and Bob had last been together on a beautiful day in March. Riding the RTD bus down to Panorama Village that morning, Shelley felt the cool spring air blow through the window, a sweet and sour combination of lilac and gasoline. It was a happy, optimistic smell. This day, Shelley was wearing all the parts of her new outfit at the same time. The aqua satin miniskirt was one she’d found on a bench at the playground of her junior high school. Her small feet were loose in a pair of pumps with two-inch heels. On her hair was a red sequined headband from one of her mother’s dance costumes. To this, she had attached a rhinestone tiara from last year’s Miss America Halloween costume, creating what she thought was an unusual, stunning crown.

  The RTD bus groaned down Mango Boulevard deeper into the San Fernando Valley. When she saw Lena and Bob, Shelley pulled the cord, skittered to the front of the bus, and carefully made her way down the steps in her high heels.

  As always, it took her a moment to get used to the fact that she was there. The world in the Valley was so different; it was hotter, the streets were wider, and her skin was more tender in the dry air. She was often surprised by the relief that embraced her here.

  “Hey!” Lena exclaimed. “You’re here.”

  Lena and Bob reached for her, and she hugged them back, holding her head steady because of the tiara. Bob wore a lime-colored T-shirt, Lena wore her yellow apple-dotted Lane Bryant dress. Their hugs were muscular, enthusiastic. Something about the insistence of their arms made Shelley so grateful that her throat tightened. She waited until the bus roared away before she spoke.

  “I am just charmed to see you,” she said. She kissed her aunt on the cheek and grandly extended her hand to Bob. He looked at it, puzzled.

  “You’re supposed to kiss it,” she informed him.

  He did, wetly. She wiped the kissed hand on her skirt.

  “You’re here,” said Lena.

  “You thought I wouldn’t be?”

  Lena shrugged. “You’re twenty minutes late.”

  “Twenty-two,” said Bob, pointing to his watch.

  “Both of you look grand today,” Shelley said. She touched her aunt’s hair. “That is a very distinguished barrette.”

  Lena lifted her hand to feel her plastic barrette, which featured a smiling cow. “I know what I’m doing for the game today
,” said Lena.

  “Me, too,” said Bob.

  “Mine is better,” said Lena.

  “Everyone is equally good,” said Shelley. Seeing that they did not believe this any more than she did, she added, “You guys. Guess what I am.” She propped her hand against the trunk of a jacaranda tree, adjusted her shirt so that it fell off one shoulder, and shot out her hip.

  They looked at her, puzzled but interested. “You can guess now.”

  “A girl,” said Bob.

  “No.”

  She strolled carefully down a strip of lawn, a movement she had picked up from a model in a commercial. Her smile was so open-mouthed that it resembled a frozen scream. She took off her tiara and twirled, holding it out.

  “Here I am with my hat!”

  “A girl with her mouth open,” tried Bob.

  “No, Bob,” she said. He looked discouraged. “Today, as Sequina, I am a fashion star for 1978.”

  The words echoed, loud and ridiculous, down the street. Lena was biting her thumbnail.

  “What do you do?” asked Lena.

  “I’m not sure. I walk around, and people copy me.” She thought for a minute. “People want to wear my headband.”

  “You need to put on a sweater!” Lena crowed.

  “Excuse me, but it’s eighty degrees,” Shelley said.

  “You’re a child,” said Lena haughtily. “You need a sweater and socks.”

  She could feel them pressing toward her, wanting.

  “I want to play now,” Bob said.

  Shelley felt them hover as though she were a celebrity and they wanted to touch anything that belonged to her. Lena asked Shelley to let her smell the strawberry lip gloss that Shelley wore on a string around her neck; then she had Shelley press the lip gloss to her own lips. Bob, who wanted to be included, requested that a waxy spot be rubbed on his hand. Then the three of them shot down the street. Lena and Bob both wanted to carry Shelley’s backpack; Lena enthusiastically plowed it along the sidewalk. Bob picked it up and slung it over his shoulder and stroked it as though it were a luxurious fur. Their attention made her heart feel like a hummingbird, fluttering, suspended. There may have been no reason for her importance, but they believed in it, and she decided that there was no reason for them to be dishonest with her.

  Their warmth touched her. It felt good to pour love onto them, which they drank in like thirsty flowers.

  “Me first,” said Bob. His blue jeans were a bit large for him, and he kept yanking them up. “Everyone stop.”

  They did. They were in front of the Hacienda, a gold stucco apartment building. By the lobby was a bush riotous with red flowers, the color almost obscene. Bob bounced on the balls of his feet, excited. “I dare you to go look in the window of that apartment,” he said, pointing to a glass door that was half open. “Step in it for one second and say hello. Then step out. Me first.”

  Bob crossed the patio outside the apartment with as much stealth as his blue sneakers would allow. He touched his fingertips to the glass, then stepped onto the flat beige carpet. “Hello,” he said quietly, his arms dangling by his sides, his palms open as though in supplication; then he ducked out. Shelley and Lena were right behind him. The apartment smelled unused, like a new car.

  Shelley stood behind Lena. She wanted to get this dare over with, but she also wanted to know how it felt to stand, uninvited, in a stranger’s living room. When Lena was done, Shelley stepped inside. “Hello,” she said. The soles of her feet felt raw. Some bananas in a bowl were still a little green. One leg of the coffee table was bandaged to the top with white medical tape. She felt the urge to rush through the place and grab everything. Then she thought she heard footsteps, and she jumped out.

  They bounded to the sidewalk and ran to the end of the street. When they stopped, breathless, Bob shoved his hands into his pockets and grinned.

  “It was a nice apartment,” he said.

  “Do you think they heard our hellos?” Lena asked.

  “Maybe,” Bob said.

  They were pleased with themselves. It was as though, through their transgression, they all owned the apartment a little bit now.

  “Okay,” said Lena, “now me.”

  She plucked a cigarette from a pocket; from another she took a plastic red lighter. She pressed the button, and up flipped a golden flame; she leaned over and lit the cigarette.

  “I dare you to smoke it,” she said, handing it to Shelley.

  Shelley gripped the cigarette with her entire hand, like a murderer clutching a knife.

  “No,” said Lena, grinning. She arranged Shelley’s fingers so that she held the cigarette between her second and third fingers. “Watch me,” said Lena, proudly. She took it back and inhaled.

  “Tell her to go phhhh,” Bob said.

  Shelley tried. The cigarette tasted bland, like wet paper; then she tasted ash.

  Lena guided her hand to her mouth again. Shelley put her lips to the end and delicately exhaled some smokeless air.

  “Look at her, Bob.”

  Lena and Bob lit cigarettes for themselves, and the three of them walked along the sidewalk, smoking. The smoke rose from their mouths as though it were one gray word spoken by the same person.

  “Look how she holds it. Like me! Bob. Doesn’t she?”

  He stopped and regarded Shelley. He dropped his cigarette and ground it, primly, into the sidewalk.

  “I think she holds it like me,” he said.

  Mango Boulevard was lined with gigantic superstores, splayed out, with bulky grandeur, behind their big parking lots. Beyond them, the street melted quickly to empty lots, tufts of silver-green scrub grass, and a deep concrete drainage basin, which held only a thin brown stream. There was a heavy, clear silence here, cut only by the occasional rush of cars.

  At the end of the boulevard, a thick, muscular overpass stretched across the southbound freeway. There were two lanes for cars crossing the overpass, and a four-foot concrete wall rose on either side. Generally, at this point, Shelley, Lena, and Bob turned around.

  “Let’s go have a snack,” said Lena, standing with Bob at the end of the sidewalk.

  “I want to walk on it,” said Bob.

  He stepped onto the overpass; Lena and Shelley followed. Shelley put her hands on one low concrete wall and peered down at the freeway, a long stretch of empty asphalt, shallow pools of oil glimmering with rainbow colors in the light. Every few moments a car zoomed by.

  Lena and Bob were uncertain about what to do. “It’s a fashion shoot,” said Shelley. “What to wear when you’re walking by cars.” They stared at her. “You are Maribelle and Jacques, and you are my stylists.” She set them on either side of her and took their wrists. “I dare you . . . to fix my hair now.”

  They turned around attentively, and she answered questions that they were not capable of asking. “Yes, Jacques, I think my hair could benefit from more nutrients.” Or, “Maribelle, darling, do you really think I should go blond?” They patted her hair with their hands. Below was the whish of cars. “Thank you, Jacques and Maribelle,” she said. “Let’s go back.”

  Lena and Bob looked over the concrete wall at the ribbon of freeway, and their faces grew pensive.

  “Stand on it,” said Lena.

  Shelley touched the wall. “This?”

  Bob’s hands covered his face; he was giggling, almost weeping. “Stand up!”

  “Why?”

  “I want to see you,” said Lena.

  “Dare you,” said Bob. “Dare you, dare you—”

  They grabbed her hands.

  Because she wanted to please them, she carefully placed one foot and then the other on top of the wall; it was about a foot thick. She gripped their hands so tightly that she could feel their pulses inside their palms.

  A cold thrill of panic passed through her. The wind, tasting of honeysuckle, came as a shock against her face. Her body was fragile in the wind; her satin miniskirt blew flat against her thighs.

  The world was
completely different. Up here, she could see some cars rising over the horizon, one, then another, as though they had seen her and were swiftly coming toward her. They were small and bright in the distance, silver fish—and then they grew bigger, and became station wagons and compacts and vans. She thought she would shriek as they came closer, but she didn’t; they and their drivers passed under the bridge to the rest of their lives. Then the new cars made a fresh and deafening roar.

  Something like joy cracked open, wide and huge, in her chest. She lifted her face.

  The sky was so juicy and blue that she wanted to bite it. Her lips, in the dry wind, felt full and hot. It was as if she had never really looked at the sky before, and she wanted to jump up and float in it, surrounded by the buoyant, peaceful blue. Lena’s fingers and Bob’s were knit hard in hers, and they were pulling, as though holding on to a kite that, if released, would shoot up and disappear. She was certain that as long as she stood here, they would hold her. She knew that if she stood here forever, they would never let her go.

  “Okay,” she whispered and leaned back, breathless. They caught her in their arms and helped her stand on the overpass.

  “Was it fun?” asked Lena.

  “It was like an earthquake.” Her heart banged away in her chest. “You were good holders.” Her fear registered in her legs, all at once; they trembled, filled with air. She started to walk back to the sidewalk, and Lena followed. Bob did not.

  “I’m trying now,” said Bob.

  He was shyly backing away. Shelley reached for his hand, but he stepped back.

  “Bob, you already had your turn,” Lena told him.

  “But I want to stand there, too,” he said.

  He rushed across the overpass to the other wall, his jeans slipping down as he ran. His arms reached forward, embracing the air.

  He turned once to look at them. His forehead was lined with wrinkles, but his blue eyes were merry as a child’s. His eyebrows were raised, as though he had just had a marvelous idea.

  “Watch!” he said.

  Bob leaped onto the wall. And then he sailed over it, in a calm and normal movement, his body falling forward toward the ground.