Our New Normal (ARC)

by Colleen Faulkner

  J.J. never said a word the entire time we were there. Not a single word. For that, I could have kissed him, too.

  I close my door as Oscar climbs into the front of my truck with me. Hazel gets in the back. She hasn’t said anything in at least twenty minutes. I didn’t even hear her say good-bye to Tyler’s parents. I glance at her in the rearview mirror as I back out. As I head toward town, I debate whether or not to hold off on what I want to say. I know I should. Hazel’s obviously upset that Tyler wasn’t there to participate in what she was hoping would be a productive discussion about his responsibility to her and the baby.

  I knew coming into it that it was possible that this wouldn’t be a good conversation. But I hoped it would be. I really did. Because Hazel has made it clear she isn’t putting her baby up for adoption. So I wanted this to work out.

  We’re all quiet all the way to the grocery store.

  “Want me to run in?” Oscar asks me when I pull into the Hannaford parking lot.

  “Would you?” I say it gently, as if I appreciate the offer because I do.

  “Chicken with two sides.” He opens the door. “We need anything else?”

  “We’re having tacos at home,” I say quietly. “We have all the ingredients.”

  “Hazel?” he says.

  I see her in the rearview mirror. She shakes her head no.

  Oscar closes the door and I just sit there with my hands on the steering wheel. I look at our daughter again in the mirror. Her face looks a little fuller than it did a month ago. She seems even more beautiful. How can that be?

  She’s staring at her phone.

  “Did Tyler text you?” I ask. “Say what happened?”

  She doesn’t look up. “What happened?” Her tone is nasty. As if this is my fault.

  “Why he wasn’t there, Hazel.” I try not to sound angry. But I am angry. And I’m tired of pretending I’m not. I’ve been doing it too long. For too many years. I’m always trying to keep everyone else happy. Placated. Never rocking the boat. And I’m sick to death of it. With Hazel, with Oscar, with my parents, with my sister.

  Hazel doesn’t say anything.

  I sit there and wait for her to respond. A minute passes. Another. I let five minutes go by, but then I just can’t keep my mouth shut. “Hazel, I know you don’t want to hear this, but—”

  “So don’t say it,” she snaps.

  I rest my arm on the seat and turn around to face her. “You know why he wasn’t there. He wasn’t there because he has no intention of taking responsibility—”

  “Mom, you don’t—”

  “He has no intention of taking any responsibility for this baby,” I say, talking over her. “You realize that, right, Hazel?” I study her beautiful face. She looks like she’s on the verge of tears and it occurs to me that maybe I should back off. Let it go, at least for now. But I can’t. From the beginning, I was opposed to Hazel dating Tyler at all. I knew he was no good for her. I kept my mouth shut then, and in retrospect, possibly to the detriment of my daughter. I’m not holding back anymore and I’m not apologizing for saying what I think. And fair is fair. If I’m going to be a part of this, if I’m going to be able to help my daughter become a mother, I have to be able to have my say.

  “Hazel, Tyler has no intention of watching this baby so you can go back to school next year. He—”

  “Cricket says she’ll watch the baby,” she flings at me, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Cricket works shift work. How’s she going to—”

  “Mom! This isn’t your baby! I told you I would figure it out.”

  “Please keep your voice down. The window is open.” I pause and then go on. “You told me,” I say calmly, even though I don’t feel calm, “that you and Tyler were going to figure things out. What I’m trying to say is that I think this is a pretty good indication that you’re going to be figuring this out on your own because Tyler—”

  “Mom! Can we not talk about this right now?” She drops her phone to her lap and covers her face with her hands.

  “Honey, I’m not saying you can’t do it. I’m not saying that I think you’re . . . incapable. I’m just saying you need to understand that, in all likelihood, you’re going to be on your own on this. And even if Tyler does stick around—”

  “How can you say that!” She drops her hands. “Of course he’s going to stick around. He just didn’t want to talk to you guys! He didn’t want to talk to you, Mom! That’s why he wasn’t there! Because Tyler didn’t want to—”

  The passenger-side door jerks open and Hazel goes silent as Oscar gets in. “I can hear you across the parking lot,” he says, looking at me.

  Hear me? I want to say, my feathers at once ruffling. I’m not shouting. Your daughter is the one who’s shouting.

  But I don’t say it. I don’t say anything.

  Hazel’s crying now, big, loud, pitiful sobs.

  I bite my tongue and start the new truck that I was so happy with this morning when I called my insurance company to add it to our policy. I’m angry that I didn’t get to share my pleasure over it with my family. I know it’s just a truck, a possession, but it represents this new chapter in my life that I’m so excited about. And anxious over. And I want to share it with my family. With Oscar. I know pregnant teenage daughter trumps Mom’s new job, but I can’t help thinking that just once in the last month it would have been nice to have had my new business been the topic of discussion. Oscar’s focus.

  Which makes me a terrible mother. A terrible wife. And a terrible person.

  I drive to Mom and Dad’s. When I pull into the driveway, Oscar says, “You going in?” without looking at me.

  “Do you mind?” I turn to him, making an apologetic face. “Could you tell Mom I’ll be by after dinner?”

  He gets out of the truck, taking the bag and smell of rotisserie chicken with him.

  I can’t hear Hazel crying anymore, but she’s sniffling. Her phone dings and I want to ask if it’s Tyler finally, but I don’t say anything.

  Oscar’s back in the truck in three or four minutes and we drive home in silence. The truck has barely rolled to a stop in our driveway when Hazel jumps out. I want to call out to her something sarcastic about doing dangerous things while carrying my grandchild, but I check myself. I’m not that kind of mother. Well, I guess I am, because I thought about that, but I don’t want to be that mother.

  The back door of the truck slams and Oscar unbuckles his seat belt. But he doesn’t get out. He just sits there for a moment and then turns in the seat to face me. “What the hell was that all about? What did you say to her?”

  I unbuckle myself slowly, trying to take care in the words I choose. “I just—Oscar—” I glance at him, at my handsome husband, who looks so angry with me now. “I told her that I thought Tyler not being there might be a good indication of how much she’s going to be able to count on him in the next few months. When the baby is born.”

  He shakes his head, looking away from me.

  “It’s true!” I defend. “You know I’m right. Tyler wasn’t there tonight because he doesn’t care about Hazel and he doesn’t care about his baby. It’s that simple.”

  “To you, maybe. But we don’t all have the convenience of living in your world of black and white. Tyler not being there doesn’t necessarily mean he doesn’t care about his baby. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about Hazel. I think it’s more complicated than that.”

  I make a sound of derision. Complicated, Tyler is not. But I don’t say it because even if it’s true, I know it will come off sounding mean and judgmental.

  “Liv, what’s going on with you?” Oscar doesn’t even attempt to hide his displeasure with me.

  “What’s going on with me? What’s going on with me?” I sound like Cricket now. If she said pink pig pjs one more time, I was going to strangle her. But I don’t answer him because I don’t know what’s going on with me. My sixteen-year-old daughter is knocked up? No, it’s more than that and I
know it. He knows it. A midlife crisis, maybe? Does that even happen to women?

  “We’ve always been a team, Liv,” he goes on. “You and I and the kids. We’ve always been here for each other. Supported each other.”

  “What makes you say I’m not being supportive?”

  He looks at me with exaggerated disbelief.

  “Just because I’m not buying pink pig pjs? You think I’m not being supportive?” I lean closer to him on the bench seat. “Oscar, I’ve been nothing but supportive of Hazel for the last sixteen years and ten months. I gave birth to her, I fed her from my body, I clothed her, I taught her to tie her shoes, I made a papier-mâché solar system with her.” Now I’m ticking off on my fingers. “I took her to flute lessons, math tutors, and soccer games galore. I threw birthday parties for her with a bouncy house in the backyard and a homemade princess three-tiered cake. I held her in my arms when the first boy she ever liked didn’t like her. I showed her how to use a tampon! I didn’t hand her the instructions like my mom did. I showed her. So, don’t tell me—”

  “Liv—” he interrupts.

  “Don’t tell me,” I go on, louder, “that I’m not being supportive of our daughter. No, I don’t think she should keep this baby. But she is keeping it. Which affects me, which means—”

  “Liv!” he says even louder.

  I drop my hands to the tops of my thighs and go silent. I stare out the windshield. The wind is blowing and there are leaves tumbling across the lawn. This morning, when I left early to go have a look at some old windows someone had set aside for me, I felt the first chill of fall.

  “You’re being selfish,” Oscar tells me.

  I look at him. “Selfish?”

  He exhales. He’s not making eye contact with me now. “I know you did all of those things for her. I know you do things for her every day. But, Liv, that’s just being a parent. Those are the things we do for our children.” He hesitates. “And I get that you thought you were going to start having less responsibility, now that she’s older. But . . . you can’t just step back and say you’re done”—he raises both hands, palms out—“because she made a mistake.”

  “I’m not saying I’m done. I will help her, Oscar.” I look at him, needing him to look at me. “But I’m not going to pretend I’m happy about this. And I’m going to tell Hazel what I think.”

  He shakes his head, still looking straight ahead. “I’m not saying you have to be happy about the baby. I’m just saying you have to accept it and move on.” He finally turns to look at me. “You think I want our sixteen-year-old daughter to have a baby? You think I don’t see this every day in the ED? You think I don’t know what she’s up against now?”

  I just sit there. I don’t know what to say. I’m hurt that Oscar would accuse me of being selfish. I’m hurt that he doesn’t even seem to be trying to see my side of this situation. I’m hurt that after almost twenty-one years of marriage, he would allow something like this to come between us.

  He thinks I’m selfish. I worked fifty hours in the last week between the Anselin house and the county offices where there was a screwup in the permits. I made dinner for our family and my parents six of the last seven days. I have vacuumed and washed dishes and folded everyone’s laundry in our house. I also did my parents’ laundry twice this week because Mom is having a bad week, hasn’t felt up to it, and refuses to let Dad use her washing machine. I went to two doctors’ appointments with my mom, one with my dad, and I took Hazel for lab work. I also grocery shopped for us and my parents. And remembered to send birthday cards, with gift certificates, to Oscar’s sister’s kids, away at college. This week I ordered new scrubs for Oscar, a pair of stretchy pants for Hazel, I crawled around on the floor for twenty minutes to locate my dad’s dentures, I took the dog to the vet . . . the list seems endless.

  But I’m being selfish.

  The two of us just sit there in silence.

  Oscar breaks first in this adult game of conversational chicken. He smooths his beard with his hand, seeming to contemplate what he wants to say, which isn’t like him. I’m the one always weighing my words. He just says what comes to mind and no one thinks he’s selfish or uncaring.

  “Liv, I think you need to move past the fact that you don’t want Hazel to have this baby, to accepting it. Accepting it as the new normal. Hazel’s normal. Our normal.”

  And this, I think, is this our new normal, Oscar? This distance. This lack of . . . the connection that we’ve always felt? But I can’t bring myself to say it. Because if I say it, it will be real.

  Instead, I sigh, realizing I’m tired. Really tired. I probably only slept five hours last night and five the night before. I’ve been combing the Internet, looking for antique hardware for the Anselins’ doors and cabinets. At rock bottom prices, of course.

  “You’re right,” I say. “I need to move on. Hazel’s going to have a baby. That’s our new normal.” I give a little laugh, resting my hand on the seat between us. “We’re going to be grandparents.”

  He offers a half smile and for a second I think he’s going to take my hand, or maybe even put his arm around me and hug me. I could really use a hug right now. Instead, he opens the door and gets out. “I’ve got to do a little reading. Saw something interesting in the ED today. Call me when dinner’s ready?”

  I just sit there, staring at him as he walks away. “Sure,” I whisper.

  14

  Hazel

  Katy squeals and flings herself onto her back on my grandmother’s bed, kicking and beating her fists on the mattress. “Oh, jeez, no! Was it as awful as it sounds? She just . . . went all up in there?”

  We’re supposed to be making the bed, but mostly we’re just goofing around. I flop down on my back beside her, giggling. I love my gran’s bed. It’s the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept in. I slept in this bed with her when I spent the night until I was, like, twelve years old. I could sleep with Gran because Granddad has had his own bedroom for as long as I can remember. Gran always said it was so they didn’t get a divorce. I loved snuggling in bed with her. She used to tell me the best stories.

  “It wasn’t that big a deal,” I tell Katy. “I mean it was quick. You put your feet up in the stirrup thingies and . . . I don’t know. She does her thing while you stare at a poster of a baby in a uterus that’s taped on the ceiling. She took a scrape of skin cells with this long Q-tip-looking thing. The test is to check for abnormal cells on the cervix.”

  “Do pregnant sixteen-year-olds even get cervical cancer?” Katy looks at me, her freckled nose only inches from mine. She’s a redhead like me, which is crazy because there are only three gingers in our entire high school, now that Sean is gone. The third is this girl Althea, but she’s a total weirdo. Previous home-schooler. No further explanation needed.

  “I don’t know if they get cervical cancer. I would guess they do; otherwise, Dr. Gallagher wouldn’t have said I needed the test, right?” I turn my head to stare at the ceiling, my hand going to my belly that’s definitely a little round now. I keep waiting to feel the baby move. From what I’ve read online, with first pregnancies, you don’t usually feel the baby until twenty-five weeks. I’m only twenty now. But women who have had babies before, who know what it feels like, say they can feel their baby at, like, thirteen or fourteen weeks. I really want to feel my baby. But I want to know it’s for real and not my stomach grumbling. Which happens a lot.

  I keep getting indigestion. I didn’t even know what that was until one night I started burping up burrito and felt like my throat and stomach were on fire. Mom gave me some coconut water, which made me feel a lot better, and then we agreed I’d lay off the spicy salsa and jalapeños next time. We both laughed about it. After I cried because I was pretty sure I was dying from esophageal cancer, which meant my baby would die, too.

  “I decided not to look up the whole cervical-cancer thing,” I admit to Katy. “I’ve got enough stuff to stress over right now.”

  Katy laughs. She came to help
me do some things for my grandparents, but mostly she just wanted to hear about my OB appointment. My second with Dr. Gallagher. The first time I was so nervous and so upset that Dr. Gallagher said we could just hold off on the internal exam until my next visit. That first time, we just did the pee test and then a blood test to confirm I was preggers.

  Yesterday, Mom went with me, even though I can drive myself now. She even offered to go into the exam room and hold my hand or whatever. She said she wouldn’t look. I almost told her to come in. But then I felt like a baby because if I’m old enough to have sex on Tyler’s parents’ couch after school, I’m old enough for a pelvic exam with a female, board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist. That’s what I told Mom. She laughed and agreed with me. But she said she’d still go in with me, which, as much as I hate to admit it, I thought was sweet of her.

  “Jeez, Hazel. I still can’t believe you’re going to have a baby. I haven’t even had sex.” Katy rolls onto her side and lays her hand on my belly beside my hand.

  I think for a minute. “You said you let Hunter York play with your tits that night you drank too much beer.”

  She does this really funny thing that sounds like a pig snort. “He was so drunk he didn’t even remember it when I saw him in school the next day. It doesn’t count as sex if the guy doesn’t remember it happened. Besides, that’s not sex. That’s just goofing around.”

  I agree with her, but I don’t say anything. I’m glad she didn’t have sex with Hunter because this girl we know from U.S. History said she had sex with him, and then he never talked to her again. Except to copy her bio homework.

  “I’m going to be Aunt Katy.” She stares at her hand on my belly like she’s still trying to wrap her head around the idea.

  I’m wearing my yoga pants that Mom ordered for me. I didn’t wear them for a couple of weeks after she bought them. Instead, I wore them unbuttoned and used the hair tie trick. But one morning when my fat jeans were still wet in the dryer, I tried on the yoga pants because I didn’t want to be late. They’re so comfortable that I wear them almost every day. Mom keeps offering to get me another pair, but I tell her no because you give Mom an inch and she takes miles. She’ll order me half a dozen pairs of the same pants if I admit I like them.