A Piece Of Normal Read online

  "Yeah," she says. "Yeah, I guess that's the deal."

  "Well, no thanks. I don't want it."

  She's quiet, picking at a loose thread on the quilt. Then she looks up at me and says, "But think of this: the deal you're offering me is that if I stick around, I get to feel guilty for the rest of my life for leaving here and not ever calling you." She shrugs and wrinkles her nose. "Those are our deals. Might as well get used to it."

  "I'm going to bed." I go into the bathroom and turn on the water and start washing my face and brushing my teeth. When I come out, she's still there.

  "Well?" she says. She's lying on her stomach on the bed. "Isn't that the deal? I mean, the real honest-to-God, not-just-a-fake-nice kind of deal? Face it, Lily. This is who we are, and we're not going to change. You're stuck, and I'm a fuckup."

  "I put fresh sheets on the futon in the guest room. You'll be pleased to know there are no parental cooties in there. Take your beer and go sleep in there. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

  She gets up, and I get in bed and snap off the lamp. "And close my door, please, when you go."

  She stands there in the dark for a moment more, illuminated by the hall light, and then she stalks off to the other room. I hear her groan as she stomps around, tossing things off the bed. After a while she's back. A beam of light from the hall slices across my bed. Then she's breathing loudly, standing at the side of the bed.

  "What do you want?" I say.

  "Lily?" she says in a tiny voice. "Lily, can I get in your bed just for tonight? Please?"

  It's just what she used to say when she was little. I remember now: she never could stand to be alone.

  I lie there for just a split second, and then I hold up the covers for her. "Okay," I say thickly, just like I used to. "But you know the rules: don't kick me and no peeing in the bed."

  13

  The newspaper I work for—called The Edge—has its offices in a converted old Victorian house on a busy section of Orange Street in New Haven, a part of town with lots of houses and little mom-and-pop markets, and hardly any place to park. So on Monday morning, I park my car blocks and blocks away, mainly so I can savor this time to be alone—free to walk and think without anybody yammering at me. After a weekend of being with my sister, I'm so happy to be alone that I feel like collaring the other people on the sidewalk and saying, "Look at me! I'm by myself!" But then they'd probably think I'm even weirder than I look—and I do look weird. Yep, even though it's a hot summer day, I'm wearing my dad's old watch cap to hide my hair. God forbid my bright orange and yellow blobs should be visible. Cars might crash. Airplanes flying overhead could lose visual contact with the tower.

  Dana has made me insane. All the questions, the veiled critical analysis of my life: "So, Lily, tell me about your boyfriends. What? You don't have any? What was the point of getting divorced if you didn't get some new boyfriends?" And then: "Why don't we go to the store and get another kit and try something else with your hair? Or better yet, why don't we cut it all off and make you look really cute and punk? Or—I know—let's straighten your hair! In fact, why do you dress like that? Oooh, let's go through your clothes and throw out the ones that make you look too old!"

  And on and on and on. My weight, my friends, my short marriage and long divorce, even the placement of the furniture, for God's sake—everything is up for discussion.

  All I want right now is to get to my cozy little upstairs office, the one that looks out over the sidewalks of New Haven, and sit there with my boxes of letters that Carl will bring in. I want to immerse myself in other people's troubles with my mind and heart clear, and let my own life just simmer on hold for a while.

  When I come up the stairs, Jackie Mahon, the editorial assistant, looks up and motions me over. "Gotta tell you, The Rooster wants to see you. And he's in one of his moods."

  "Oh, great," I say.

  The Rooster is really named Casey McMillen, but the staff calls him The Rooster because of the way he struts around the place like some proud little banty, and also because his hair sticks up in little points. The editor and co-publisher of The Edge, he is the most focused, one-track person I know. He will someday be scary, but right now, at twenty-four, he simply looks as though he might be somebody's nerdy twelve-year-old brother who happens to have strong, odd opinions and more power than he knows what to do with.

  He and his friend Lance Hamilton, who looks possibly thirteen, started the paper two years ago with money they found in their daddies' couch cushions, I think, just to give the local daily a big scare. They decided they were going to appeal to young people, or what Casey always calls the "underserved youth market." Nobody thought it would work, least of all their fathers, I'm sure. But surprisingly, within a few months they were gobbling up ad revenues, and by the end of the first year they were actually turning something of a profit. They hired a slew of reporters and photographers, including me. My job was to write theater reviews for community theater productions, which I was terrible at, mainly because I couldn't bear to say anything bad, even if the play was awful. I praised everything. Teddy once said that I held the record for using the greatest number of synonyms for the word good.

  Then one day, about a year ago, standing around in Casey's office, totally bored and overcaffeinated, I happened to pick up the Ann Landers column—now that she was dead, Casey and Lance were rerunning old columns—and started riffing about how lame it was that Ann Landers was so obsessed with the way people hung their rolls of toilet paper, of all things. Anyone can make fun of an old Ann Landers column and sound cool. This was not my best stuff, you understand. But The Rooster was dumbfounded at such insights. His jaw went slack. His eyes were like bright saucers.

  I said, "If we're trying to go for the underserved youth market, I think we have to consider that no one under thirty has ever once cared about how to change the toilet paper roll"—and somehow, by the end of the hour, Ann Landers reruns were out and I was the new advice columnist. Yeah, me—former ringleader of the Scallopini, den mother to all of Dana's misfit friends, and survivor of a breakdown, therapy, and even marriage to a therapist. I was now going to have a new incarnation as an advice columnist. Casey was practically jumping up and down like the twelve-year-old he really is deep inside.

  "You've got to be edgy and tough and opinionated," he said. "This will be a no-holds-barred, I'll-tell-you-what-your-friends-wouldn't-dare-tell-you kind of column. You gotta be sarcastic. I want irony." I said, "Yeah, yeah," and thought that in a moment he might start barking and running in circles around his desk.

  In the press release he sent out later that day, I was described as a young woman who had known marriage, divorce, motherhood, and "personal tragedy," and who was uniquely qualified to write about people's life experiences, their romantic dilemmas, even their parenting concerns. Plus, he said, I was mature. (We, the staff, got a good laugh over that one, since anyone compared to Casey is mature.)

  Within a couple of weeks, my desk in the newsroom was piled high with letters from people wanting help; after a month, I got my own little upstairs office just to contain all the mail that was coming in; and now, a year or so into it, The Rooster has put an advertisement for my "Dear Lily" column on buses all over the city. With my picture. (I have dull brown hair in the photo, curled into little corkscrews, and the expression on my face is that of somebody striving to look tougher, edgier, and more opinionated than she really is.)

  Now Jackie is staring at me and popping her gum. "So what's with the winter hat? Did you get to fooling around and shave your head or something?"

  I shift my purse to the other shoulder. "Hair disaster. Not shaved yet, but I'm considering that next. What does The Rooster have in mind? Any clue?"

  "Oh, it's just one of those restless moods. He was over in Sports earlier, telling them they have to cover Little League as though it's the majors. A kid's picture on the cover every day. I think a couple of the sports writers are sending out their résumés for new jobs as we speak. If you
want my humble opinion," she says, "I'd say, don't argue with him. I think he has the male version of PMS."

  "Just what I'm in the mood for," I tell her.

  Then, when I get to my desk and check my e-mail, there's even more bad news. There's a message from Kendall, saying, "Teddy??? That was your best idea of who to fix me up with??? We are so going to lunch today!"

  I type back, "Expecting a Rooster Attack soon. Can't promise lunch until I see what's left of me." In all the excitement over Dana's coming, I'd actually almost forgotten about Kendall's date with Teddy. But of course we haven't had the postmortem from her point of view. How many times do I have to relive this date? That's it. I am not sending him out with anyone else. He has to find his own women.

  I've just gotten her reply—"NO EXCUSES, BROWN. We're going to lunch even if I have to come up there with a chicken hawk to get Mr. Rooster to leave you alone!!!"—when I look up to see Casey standing in the doorway. I press the delete key as quickly as I can, but I'm still laughing and flustered when I turn to him and say, "HI!" far too brightly. He looks at me quizzically.

  "Glad you're in a good mood. What's with the hat?" He comes in and hovers around my desk, then plops down in the guest chair and starts picking at a clump of dried mud on his old Birkenstocks and drops it on the floor. He really does act like a twelve-year-old. Then, wouldn't you know, Carl shows up with the fresh, new letters, and Casey takes the box and starts going through them. I hate it that he gets his dirty paws all over them first, idly picking them up, reading a few lines out loud mockingly, and then throwing them back in the box. I want to say, "Stop contaminating them!" but I don't.

  "So what's up?" I say. "Jackie said you wanted to talk to me."

  He puts down the letter he's holding and looks at me through his owly glasses. "Yeaaaah. Not happy. You're losing it, Brown," he says. "Column needs more edge."

  I bristle. "It has edge."

  "No. I hate to say it, but the column sucks lately," he says. "We agreed this was going to be a hard-hitting, opinionated, short answers kind of column—one two three. Bada-bing, bada-boom. In and out. Yes. No. Leave him. Tell her to forget it. Over and out. Entertainment, not psychoanalysis. You're going on too long."

  I look at him. "The column," I say, clearing my throat for emphasis, "is about people's problems. That in itself makes it entertaining. People love to read about other people's problems."

  "Yeah, but you write like some normal suburban mom from Branford who doesn't have a clue. Get tough with these people. Make it funny."

  "Casey—"

  "No. Don't argue about this. I mean it." He looks at me for a long moment, and I see in his eyes how he thinks about this paper all the time, that it's his life. He eats, sleeps, and breathes it and wakes up worrying about it in the middle of the night. I actually understand that kind of worry. I can sympathize with him. But then he says, "You know, the trouble is, you could use some more edge yourself. That's what's going down here. You don't change, Brown. You're the same old, same old."

  "Casey," I say, and rip the cap off my head. "Look, just look at this hair! Tell me, is this the hair of somebody who doesn't have edge? Just look at me! Would a suburban mom from Branford go around with hair that looks this crazy? Well? Is this edge? Is it?"

  He stares at my hair for a long time, quietly, calmly considering it, and then he shakes his head. "No, no, that's not edge. But the cap," he muses, "now the winter cap in the summertime: that's approaching something like edge. Write like you're wearing that cap all summer long. And be sarcastic."

  After he leaves, I sit there and stare out the window. What the hell is this, Improve Lily Week? Push Lily into a Corner, and Then Stomp on Her Week? I think that if one more person tells me that I need to change, I'm going to scream. I'd just like to know if there is any person in the world—anybody at all—who thinks I might be just right.

  ***

  And, if things aren't bad enough, I have to go to lunch with Kendall.

  "It is possible," I tell her as we walk over to Claire's Corner Copia for lunch, "that The Rooster has lost his mind." I try to set the scene for her, tell her about how he just barged in, said he wasn't happy, then made fun of some of the newest letters. Made fun! She doesn't seem to be listening, which is weird because she always agrees with me about The Rooster. We stick together on all things concerning him. "So then," I say, "he goes into how I don't have edge, I'm not tough, and I'm just a suburban mom from Branford, and then he leaves me with this warning. He says..."

  Kendall's walking two steps ahead of me. I stop talking, just to see if she's listening. She doesn't slow down and say, "A warning? What did he say?" In fact, she doesn't show any interest at all. Her eyes are pointed straight ahead and she's walking so fast in her espadrilles that I have to take an extra little step every now and then just to keep up with her. It occurs to me that she hasn't even asked me why I'm wearing a hat.

  I catch up with her. "Hey, why are you walking so fast?" I say.

  She says in a hard voice, "Are you really this clueless? I am so mad at you right now it's all I can do not to start screaming right here."

  I blanch. "Wait. You're that mad?... About the Teddy thing?"

  "Hell, yes, I'm that mad about the Teddy thing. You just go on and on about this stupid little scene with Casey—just another work thing—and, I'm sorry, but it's clear that you couldn't care less how I must be feeling after that horrible date you sent me on with him." She stops walking and faces me. I see that her face is red. Like, she's really mad. "How could you have set me up with him, Lily? God! I open up to you completely and tell you how much I wanted to date a nice guy. I tell you that I want to get married—and your idea of helping me is Teddy? Was that supposed to be some kind of joke?"

  "Of course not," I say. "Listen, he's sorry he acted so weird. He feels really bad about it."

  Her eyes widen. "He told you? Oh, great! So he even talks about it? Oh, God!"

  "No, it's just that. . ."

  We go inside Claire's and stand in the order line, along with half the population of New Haven. Kendall's face is so red that I'm afraid she might burst into tears. But then she turns to me, and I see that, no, she's going to go the other way. She's going to be furious instead.

  "So he actually has already told you about the date? I cannot believe this. He doesn't talk to me the whole time, just sits there looking like he wants to die, and then he takes me home at eight-thirty. And then he goes and tells you the whole thing. So tell me. What exactly did he say about me? What didn't he like?" She glares at me. "No, never mind. I don't care what he said."

  "He didn't say anything bad, just that—"

  She makes a zipping motion with her lip. "No! I said don't tell me. I don't care what that man thinks. He barely even spoke to me. He was like somebody who'd gone into a coma. I had to do all the talking, all the work. Tell me this: what were you thinking, setting us up? Could there be two more opposite people on the planet?"

  "I don't know. I-I guess I thought the two of you might hit it off."

  "You must think I'm pretty desperate and pathetic if you thought I was going to want somebody like that," she says. People are starting to turn and look at her—not that she cares.

  "He... I don't know what's wrong with him. He's not great with the social skills. He's just. . . well, that's Teddy." I shrug. "I'm sorry. What can I say?"

  She says loudly, "You know what it is. You know perfectly well that he's still hung up on you. Why do you set him up on dates with other people when obviously it's you he wants to be with? That's what this is, you know. He wants you."

  "He's not really hung up on me. He's just out of practice with dating. I'm sorry."

  But she can't stop. "You know what he needs? A quarantine sign around him saying DANGER: IN LOVE WITH SOMEONE ELSE."

  The guy in line behind us laughs a little uncomfortably. Oh, please, I think. Not an interactive audience for her. And sure enough, Kendall turns to him and says, "Can you believe this, what
I'm trying to tell this woman here? Swear to God, it's all true. She divorces this perfectly nice man, and then she gets all her friends to date him, and then she wonders why it never works out! Like, duh. She's becoming a public nuisance with this guy."

  "Kendall," I growl.

  She says, "You look like an intelligent, sensitive man. Is that not a hostile act? Isn't it? I actually dressed up for this guy, went to the trouble to clean my house, just in case he might want to set foot in it." She pauses, shifts gears, smiles at the man, and then holds out her hand. "I'm sorry. My name is Kendall. And you are?"

  The guy shakes her hand and says his name is Alex. I am hoping he'll ask her out right then to make it all up to her, and we can stop talking about Teddy. Just then the order taker behind the counter barks out to Kendall, "What's it gonna be?" and she now has to start mulling over the chalkboard menu for the first time, even though we've been standing in line for nearly ten minutes. Of course she doesn't see that everyone in the line and behind the counter is getting annoyed with her.

  Alex and I seem to be left with each other. He says in a low voice, "Wow. Are you all right?" He looks at me closely. He has nice eyes, neon blue, as if they have lights on behind them. "I'll bet you didn't think your ex's date was going to end up being something all of New Haven got to hear about."

  "You got that right."

  "Wait. Do I know you?" he says. He tilts his head. "You look familiar."

  "No, I don't think you do," I say, staring at the floor.

  "No, I think I know you. Really."

  A bus rumbles past the open door, and he laughs. "Aha! You're Lily," he says softly. "Dear Lily. From The Edge. You actually just rolled past on that bus."

  "Did I?"

  "Without the hat. Would you think I was some fawning psychopath if I told you how much I like your column?"

  "Thank you," I say. Maybe he could come and face down The Rooster.