Our New Normal (ARC)

by Colleen Faulkner

  “I’ll get the wine,” I tell Oscar.

  “And your dad wants another Old Fashioned.” He holds up the 1960s-style rocks glass that probably is from the 1960s. A remnant of Oscar’s parents’ possessions. Like my parents, they were seriously into their cocktails. Think Mad Men on a Friday night; that was the Ridgelys.

  “Think it’s okay?” He holds up the glass. “To make your dad another?”

  “Sure. He’s not driving the lawnmower home, right?”

  We both laugh and Oscar surprises me by reaching out and catching my hand. “Hey, you look beautiful today.” He pulls me toward him.

  I know I frown, looking down at my jeans, V-neck sweater, and the old sheepskin boots I wear indoors in the winter. “I do?” But then I smile, looking up at him. “Thank you.”

  He takes Marie’s wineglass from my hand and sets it on the counter. “You’re welcome. I like you in that color blue.” He wraps his arms around me and kisses me on the lips. I find myself closing my eyes. He tastes like Shipyard beer and the Oscar I knew of yore. His kiss is familiar, yet somehow excitingly unfamiliar. It’s been that long.

  I laugh when I open my eyes, feeling a little giddy. It’s been some time since he’s kissed me like that, in a way other than perfunctory. It’s been more than a month since we had sex and, even then, there wasn’t much in the way of kissing. Just right down to business. And while it was nice, I realize I miss the kissing. I miss the closeness I feel when we kiss. When we look into each other’s eyes like this.

  “Oh yeah?” I say, playfully. “You like this sweater that’s a million years old?”

  “I like you in this sweater that’s a million years old.”

  Laughter drifts into the kitchen from the family room, but I feel insulated from what’s going on in the other room. It’s just Oscar and me here. And it’s nice.

  He kisses me again, this time longer. Tenderly, and when he finally takes his lips from mine, I actually feel breathless. A little dizzy.

  “You drunk?” I ask, looking up at him, into his gorgeous eyes that I’ve missed.

  He laughs. “Nope. I just . . .” He pulls me against his chest and I can feel his breath as his chest moves. “I miss you,” he says in my ear.

  “I’ve missed you,” I whisper back, afraid to look up at him, fearing I’ll tear up. It’s been a hell of a fall.

  “I miss us, Liv.”

  We just stand there in each other’s arms and I try to enjoy his embrace, the scent of him, the sound of his breath, and not let my thoughts get away from me. Because the first thing that comes to my mind when he tells me he misses us, meaning the way we used to be, is to tell him that he’s brought about this distance between us by taking sides with Hazel against me about the baby. But it’s Thanksgiving, and time for family unity and not arguments. And I genuinely want a truce. I need one. At least for today. For the weekend while Sean is here and we can be a family. Before the intrusion of a crying baby and the stink of diapers in the trash.

  “What’s going on with the kids?” I ask, skirting the reason why it’s been so long since we’ve held each other like this.

  He takes a step back, but rests one hand casually on my waist. “They’re fine.” He scratches his chin. He’s had a few days off in a row so his red beard is unruly, like back in our college days. He wore a beard then, in the days when they weren’t cool. “Your dad interrogated Sean for a while about his classes, but our son managed to get away relatively unscathed. He’s playing charades.”

  “I’m surprised. Doesn’t he go into withdrawal after a certain number of hours without killing zombies or racing cars?”

  Oscar lifts one broad shoulder and lets it fall. “Marie unplugged the TV, so no video games.”

  We both grin. His sister is quite a character: opinionated, bossy, especially with her brothers. And their kids. She can be overwhelming at times, but her domineering ways can also be useful. Like when we need the boys to do something like reseed the lawn at the cottage or fix a leaky pipe. The boys, meaning her brothers.

  “She told him and Lewis they were going to have to hang out with the family and pretend they like it if they want their TV privileges back.”

  “So, no football today? I thought Joe wanted to see the Ravens game.”

  A new round of charades has begun in the other room.

  “House!”

  “House,” my dad repeats.

  “School!”

  “School,” my dad says. Apparently he’s playing now.

  “Present!” Joe’s daughter, twelve-year-old McKenzie, shrieks. “It’s a present! A birthday present!”

  Everyone laughs and I hear my father joining in. It’s good to hear his laughter. He’s been sullen for days. Another run-in with the neighbor. Dad wants to sell the house now. And move to Amsterdam. He went so far as to call a real estate agent, so then Mom was pissed at him because she had to send the woman away when she appeared on the front step, thinking she had a new client.

  “A Christmas present!” Olivia calls. It sounds like she’s jumping up and down.

  “Those are doors and windows Dad’s miming, nitwit,” her fifteen-year-old sister, Emma, says.

  “Mom! She called me a nitwit,” Olivia whines. “No name calling, right?”

  I meet Oscar’s blue-eyed gaze and we smile, both remembering nostalgically the days when Sean and Hazel called each other names like nitwit and stinky butt. It’s funny how in those moments, you don’t realize how precious they’ll become in your memory.

  Oscar lets go of me and goes to the refrigerator for an orange and a jar of maraschino cherries. The makings of a proper Old Fashioned. “The game doesn’t start until four thirty. We’re recording it. We’ll start it after dinner.”

  Everyone is staying tonight except my parents and Hazel. It was decided she would drive them home after dinner and spend the night with them. My mother doesn’t see as well at night as she used to and there’s an inch or two of snow in the forecast, so we agreed Hazel would ride to the cottage with us and drive my parents’ car back to Judith. She and her friend Katy plan to meet Marie and me tomorrow in Rockland for lunch and a little Christmas shopping.

  Hazel’s original plan was that she would drop her grandparents off and go home to our house to sleep, but I nixed that. I don’t want Tyler in her bed, in my house, on the planet right now. I’m fairly certain he’s getting ready to break up with Hazel. He’s been acting so weird, even weirder than usual. I think Hazel knows it’s coming, too, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to ask her about it. She sees the writing on the wall. I just don’t think she wants to translate for her mother.

  I look at Oscar. “I thought Marie unplugged the TV.”

  “Metaphorically,” he explains.

  “Ah.” I slide a cutting board across the counter to Oscar and a knife. I’m tempted to ask him if he knows anything about what’s going on with Hazel and The Shit, as I have come to acrimoniously call him. Instead, I err on the side of caution and say, “What’s Hazel doing? I don’t hear her in there.”

  “My sulky daughter?” He dumps a little super-fine sugar into my dad’s glass and then a couple of dashes of bitters. “Sulking. I guess she thought Tyler was possibly coming today?” It’s a question.

  It feels like that’s an invitation to jump into the Tyler conversation, but it seems like Oscar and I can’t speak about Hazel and Tyler without getting snippy with each other, so, because he’s offered an olive branch, and a couple of pretty nice kisses, I purposely keep my tone light. “He went to Sebago with his parents and stepbrother.”

  “Probably just as well. Your dad would give him crap about that mustache.”

  I laugh. There haven’t been many sightings of Tyler lately. He’s wisely been steering clear of us . . . and also the mother of his child, from what Hazel says. But we saw him at the pizza place in town the other night. We were sitting down to eat; he was picking up pizza. Hazel went over to talk to him at the counter. She said she invited him t
o join us. By the look on their faces, it didn’t seem as if they were having a congenial conversation, but after my talk with Hazel in the bathroom the other day, I’m trying hard to see things from her perspective. And honestly, I’m just sick of the hostility, hers and mine.

  I take Marie’s wineglass to the end of the counter and fill it from the wine box. Oscar is muddling the bitters in my dad’s glass with a little wooden stick that’s been in the utensil drawer as long as I’ve been coming here to the cottage with Oscar.

  “She feeling better?” I ask, setting the glass down so he can grab it on his way back to the family room.

  Hazel was feeling nauseated earlier in the day. I have a feeling it was the nacho cheese with fresh jalapeños she was digging into when Marie put out snacks, but I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut about what she eats unless she asks me.

  “She seems fine.” He adds ice, then bourbon to the glass. “But I’m not asking. She almost took my head off this morning when I asked her if she really wanted another chocolate chip pancake.”

  Again, our gazes meet and we both grin because we’ve both been there with Hazel multiple times over the last few months.

  “Hey, Beth is coming, right? Your dad keeps saying she’s in the bathroom.”

  I shrug. “She said she was. She’s supposed to be bringing homemade cranberry sauce.” She’d called me the previous night to confirm, but in the conversation, she mentioned she was on her way out on a date. I can’t help wondering if the date turned into a sleepover and she’s still asleep in some guy’s bed.

  He nods thoughtfully. “You want to bet on cans of sauce, or that she’s a complete no-show? Five dollars.”

  I grimace. “I think my money is on a no-show.”

  “Fine,” he says, pretending to be miffed. He points his finger at me. “But I get the no-show bet Christmas Day.”

  That makes me laugh and this time I’m the one who initiates a kiss. I’ve missed this banter that used to come so easily between us.

  “Mmm,” Oscar says against my lips, grabbing one of my butt cheeks. “How do you feel about running upstairs for a quickie?”

  I giggle. I actually giggle.

  It’s something we would have done a long time ago. An afternoon quickie. Back when the kids were little, and we could tell them we were talking about Christmas gifts, locked in our bedroom. Back in the days when we had sex more often. When life seemed simpler. When our seventeen-year-old daughter wasn’t going to become a mother herself.

  “It’s going to have to be pretty quick,” I tease. Then I point at the timer on the stove. “Turkey.”

  Oscar arches a red eyebrow that’s beginning to sprout a few gray hairs. “Seven minutes too quick for you?” He lets go of my butt and goes back to my dad’s drink.

  I eye him and move to the stove to check the potatoes.

  There’s a disagreement going on in the family room between Marie’s twins, who also started college in September. Lewis and Alexa are arguing over whether or not Lewis’s answer was close enough for a win. There are threats involving body parts being lobbed back and forth.

  I reach for my wine. “Dinner in half an hour,” I tell Oscar. “Sound the warning bell.”

  “We better wrap it up in there, anyway. Before there’s blood,” he quips, adding the cherry and slice of orange to the Old Fashioned to finish it off. He picks up the glass, then grabs my hand. “Liv, I just wanted to tell you . . .” He hesitates, looking down at the drink. “I don’t know. That I love you,” he says quietly. “As much as I ever did. As much as I loved you when we got married. It’s just that work and . . .” Letting go of my hand, he lifts his gaze to meet mine. “You know . . . stuff.”

  He means Hazel. He means our fundamental disagreement concerning our grandchild.

  I want to say something, but I don’t know what to say. Because I haven’t changed my mind. Because I still think Oscar is wrong. Hazel is wrong. My parents, too. But I’m suddenly overwhelmed with emotion. With love for who Oscar has been to me all these years. With love for the life we’ve shared. Because I’m scared to death for my family. For my marriage.

  I smile at Oscar and turn away, brushing my hand against his. On his way out of the kitchen, he passes Sean coming in.

  “What time we eating?” our son asks. “I’m starving.”

  He’s wearing a faded black T-shirt I gave him years ago that says, No, I will not fix your computer. It makes me smile because it’s awfully casual for Sean for a holiday. Even just with the family, he was always the one in the oxford shirt and khakis. Sometimes he’d bust out a tie. I like this more casual side of him. He seems calmer, too. College life has definitely been good for him, though how I don’t know. I get very few details from him when we talk.

  “Half an hour,” I tell him, poking the potatoes with a fork. They’re almost done. “Want to mash for me? I need to pull the turkey out to check it in a minute.”

  “Sure.” He takes a piece of cheese from an abandoned paper plate on the counter, then two crackers, and makes a sandwich with them.

  “Who won?” I ask, indicating the family room with my chin.

  He shrugs. “I wasn’t really paying attention. I only played because Aunt Marie said we had to.”

  I hide my smile. At the refrigerator, I pull out two sticks of butter. “Catch,” I say and hurl one across the kitchen.

  Sean throws up his hands, catches one and then the other, and sets them on the counter. He gets the colander out from under the counter.

  “You didn’t have to play charades,” I point out.

  He makes a face at me. “And risk the wrath of Aunt Marie? Mom, you don’t cross Aunt Marie.”

  “You don’t?”

  He shakes his head as if I’ve said the most idiotic thing. Do my children really think I’m an idiot?

  “Not if you can help it. She’s like you. You’re taking your life in your hands, you cross her.”

  “Like me?” I ask, feeling as if that comment came out of nowhere.

  Sean turns his back to unwrap the sticks of butter on the counter. “You’re kidding, right, Mom?”

  “No.” I look at him, genuinely confused. “You’re afraid to cross me?”

  He hesitates, obviously trying to decide what he wants to say. How much he wants to say.

  I’m caught between being impressed that my quiet, shy, introverted son would speak up like this and being hurt by his accusation.

  “Not just me.” His back is still to me. “Hazel too.”

  “Have I been that terrible of a mother?”

  He stands still for a moment. “I didn’t say that,” he says finally. “I just . . .” He exhales.

  “No, Mom. You . . . you’ve always had to have your way. Dad always lets you have your way. We all do. You have to be in control of every situation. That’s why you’re so pissed about Hazel,” he says quietly, almost more to himself than me.

  I walk over to stand beside him. We’re both facing the counter. “Sean,” I say. “I thought you agreed with me on this thing with Hazel.”

  “I did, Mom. I do. But . . . you’re still angry you didn’t get your way and you’re punishing all of us.”

  I open my arms wide. “How am I punishing you?”

  He looks down at me; I think he’s grown taller since he left for school. He’s such a combination of Oscar and me. He has his father’s red hair, but his face is narrow like mine, his hands and feet more delicate than Oscar’s. And he has my hairline: a serious window’s peak.

  “You’re punishing Dad. Hazel says all you do is fight.”

  “Since when do you talk to Hazel? I didn’t know you guys have been talking on the phone.”

  He exhales impatiently. “We haven’t. She doesn’t want to talk to me. But we hung out for a little while last night. She actually said she missed me. She told me things suck at home. That you and Dad can’t agree on what kind of pasta to make.”

  I’m immediately annoyed with my daughter for being a tattletale. I
never allowed that when they were growing up. I’m even more annoyed because Oscar and I did have a disagreement a few nights ago on what kind of pasta to cook.

  I look at Sean. I want to tell my son that he’s not old enough to understand marriage. Relationships between a husband and wife. How complicated they are. How complicated they become over time.

  I’m saved, or maybe Sean is, by the timer that goes off on the stove. “The turkey,” I say, grabbing pot holders off the counter.

  “You want me to mash the potatoes by hand or use the mixer thing?”

  I open the oven and the air is hot on my face and smells strongly of roasted turkey. “Mashed by hand. The mixer does weird things with the starch if you’re not careful.”

  I pull out the turkey and put the pan of stuffing that is technically dressing into the oven to reheat. Sean and I are both quiet for a couple of minutes while we concentrate on our tasks and try to figure out what to do with the awkwardness between us.

  Finally I say, “So . . . school is good?”

  He didn’t arrive home until six last night and then there was a flurry of activity to get out the door. By the time we got here to the cottage, got the food unpacked, and figured out why there were no lights upstairs, Sean had settled in on the couch to play a video game with friends from school, via the Internet. Headphones on, a microphone to his mouth, he barely acknowledged me when I said good night on my way upstairs. I don’t know how late he stayed up; apparently he and Hazel talked at some point last night. Then he slept in until I woke him at eleven when my parents arrived, eager to see their grandson after more than two months.

  “It is.” He moves to the stove.

  “Care to elaborate?”

  “I don’t know. I like my classes. Richard is a cool roommate. We do a lot together.” He dumps the hot potatoes into the colander, his back to me. “I met a girl,” he says so quietly that I almost don’t catch it.

  “A girl?” I have to keep the excitement out of my voice.