A Piece Of Normal Read online

  "Willems and Dreena Sue have a new baby?"

  "Yeah."

  My head is beginning to hurt. "Wait. So why would you want to stay there forever if it meant marrying a guy you didn't love, and if the guy you do love has a new baby with somebody else?"

  "Well, you nut, because I wanted to be near Willems, and it was worth it because of the whole force field thing," she says, as though this should be obvious to anyone, and she gets that old familiar look on her face, the one that means I can't be expected to understand such undying, complex emotions. Each point has to be driven home into my head, and I'm already tired of having to nod so expressively just so she won't keep hammering at me.

  "But start at the beginning," I say with some effort. "Tell me where you went right after you left here ten years ago."

  "Oh, it's all such a long story," she says. "I think I might have to be drunk to tell it." She beams me over a sly smile and jumps up. "Say, do we have any Southern Comfort?"

  "I don't think so. I don't even know what it is."

  "Oh, it's the best thing ever, dahlin'. It's like a peach liqueur they make from bourbon. Best-tastin' thing in the whole world, I swear. I'm a little hooked on it, in a totally good way, of course." She stands up and does a few stretches and some side bends, touches her toes, and then unfolds herself until she's upright. Then she stares at me. It's apparently my turn to talk.

  "Well," I say, "I'm sorry I don't have any of it. I've got some red wine, though. Merlot. Maybe a couple of beers in the fridge. Some Cokes."

  "That's okay. I'll get some out of my truck. I just thought I'd save myself the trip if you had it in here," she says. "I really, really want you to try it. You're just not going to believe how good it tastes—and then, how you get so calm and collected"—here she imitates a glider, soaring through the air—"and if you have the sense to stop there, everything's just fine as it could ever be in the whole world, but if you keep on goin', you just get wasted, wasted, wasted. Sometimes I find I want to feel one way, and sometimes the other. I think a homecoming day calls for the other, frankly." And she laughs and grabs both my hands and pulls me to my feet. "Can you believe we're together again? Can you fucking believe it? I'm here!"

  "Actually," I say, "I can't believe it. I feel like I'm in a dream or something."

  "Let's get drinking!"

  "Well, this isn't such a good time for me to start drinking. Teddy will be bringing Simon home from his friend's house, and to tell you the truth, I haven't had any dinner yet. I was about to start cooking when you came."

  "Wow! Cooking dinner and everything," she says and pats me on the butt. "Aren't you just the homey little domesticated one!"

  10

  I expect that the fact that she couldn't remember Simon's name or his age means she won't have much interest in him, but I'm wrong about that. As soon as he gets home, she goes off like a set of Fourth of July fireworks. She's in the bathroom when Teddy's car drives up, so as soon as I hear the slamming of the car doors, I go outside and say, "Guess what! My sister is here. Simon, your Aunt Dana has come!"

  Teddy raises his eyebrows at me and says, "Here? She's here?"

  I nod at him, smiling steadily, and just then Dana swoops past me out of the door and goes right for Simon, as though he's a baby bird and she's a chicken hawk. Normally he doesn't go for this type of thing. He's a dignified child who prefers that strangers go through the proper stages—shaking hands first, telling him their name, perhaps inquiring about a specific interest of his—and then he will decide if he wants to pursue a more personal relationship. But he seems stunned into compliance by this auntie of his, who picks him up and starts twirling him in circles, saying nonsense things over and over. "This is Simon Pieman! Simon Pieman! And I'm Auntie Dana! Auntie Shanty Danty!"

  Teddy and I have nothing to do but stand back and watch.

  He points to his watch, meaning When did she come? And I hold up two fingers: Two hours ago. He motions: Everything okay? And I shrug: Yeah. I guess so.

  "Tomorrow," she says to Simon, "you know what? I'm going to give you a big pack of gum. Because I've been readin' up on what aunties are supposed to act like, and they're s'posed to bring gum to their nephews, is what I found out! Did you know that? You probably already knew that, didn't you? You read the Aunt and Nephew Code Book long ago, I bet."

  Then, after smothering him with hundreds of kisses, which she claims were sent special delivery to her just to give to him and to him only—it's corny but he laughs—she puts him aside and turns her attention to Teddy, palavering over him as though he's the real, current brother-in-law she was always dying to meet, hugging him and laughing about how it's just too damn bad she didn't get here in time for the actual marriage to still be intact. But these days. . . well, things don't last like they used to.

  "Lily put up with me for two years, and then she couldn't take it anymore," he says in as Eeyore-ish a voice as you're going to hear outside of a Winnie the Pooh video. And she throws back her head and laughs and says, "Funny, she could put up with me for only two years, too. Maybe that's her cosmic limit with people."

  Funny how they gloss over the part about how both of them were the ones who left me.

  ***

  After all the introductions and hugging, we go inside and I get out Momma's old daisy-covered tin recipe box, with all the index cards in Momma's handwriting—foods Dana used to adore. Cooking seems safe, I think. It'll give me something to concentrate on, something to do with my hands, which are so fluttery that they need to be put to work. Dana is all over the place, a jittery bundle of nerves. It's as though she's got to make her mark on everything, reclaim her territory. She does the human equivalent of peeing on the furniture: bouncing around the rooms, pulling stuff off the shelves, talking way too loud, playing records she used to remember, then taking them off the stereo and putting on new ones, hauling out the photo albums of us when we were little, calling to me to look at each thing she's rediscovering. She puts on Frank Sinatra as loud as possible, and takes one of Momma's seascapes off the wall, marches it over to Teddy, and says in an authoritative voice, "Look! Would you just look at the way my momma did clouds! You know anybody who does clouds like that?" She waits, staring at him, her eyes intense. "Nobody does clouds like that—nobody!"

  Teddy laughs in confusion. Some screw in my head tightens another half turn, but I smile at her and wave recipe cards in her direction to get her attention. "Dana? Dana? Dana! Would you like mac and cheese, or meat loaf, or fried chicken?" I say. I have to yell to be heard over Frank Sinatra singing "The Lady Is a Tramp." Finally I go over and turn the sound down and look at her. "Listen, sweetie, I want to make you a coming-home feast! Just tell me what you want, and I'll make it."

  But she's suddenly intent on dancing around the room with her eyes closed, crooning along with Sinatra, banging on her hip with an imaginary tambourine, and coming perilously close to knocking over lamps. We all watch her. You can't help it. Her energy takes up the whole space. I decide on the dinner myself—mac and cheese from scratch, the most comforting of the comfort foods. It used to be her favorite.

  When the song's over, Dana's eyes fly open and she gets all excited again and insists that Simon and Teddy must go with her to her truck. Men love this truck! It is an excellent cherry red pickup with all kinds of quads and duals and traction stuff, cruise control, blah blah blah, she says. Teddy laughingly admits he hasn't the vaguest notion of what any of that stuff means, and she says, "Really? Because I was just showing off for you. I don't really have any idea what's under the hood of this thing. I just know that Texas men seem to think it's excellent."

  Anyway, they're not really going out there to admire the engine, she tells him, winking. She wants to get the Southern Comfort and have the three of us drink some. You know, to really celebrate. "Because this is my homecoming day! I didn't think I'd ever be here, but here I am. Yee-hawwww, honey!" And she spins Simon around in yet another circle.

  We're all dazed somehow, as
if she's cast a spell on us. I'm stunned to realize that my cheeks hurt, and only then do I see that they ache from smiling. I didn't even know I was smiling. It's more like a rigor mortis clench, actually. I grate up the heaps of sharp cheddar cheese, and whip up the cream and the flour and the eggs. It's then, looking down into this old blue bowl of my mother's, hearing the whirring of the mixer, that I have a moment of clarity, see that I'm simply showing off, trying way too hard to please her.

  Look, dear prodigal sister, look over here! I have, for your pleasure and enjoyment, my ex-husband and my charming, precocious, friendly child. And here is the macaroni and cheese I can make at a moment's notice, just for you. And yes, here is the house itself, the house of your childhood, all clean and ready for you to step into again, out of life's turmoil. Music and familiarity and laughter and redemption. All for you.

  All for you.

  By the time they come back from the truck, I've put the macaroni in the oven to bake and am cutting up vegetables for a salad. Teddy pours the Southern Comfort—"May I?" he says gallantly—and then he puts on music and stands around smiling and looking debonair with his drink in his hand, like Hugh Hefner without the smoking jacket.

  Simon, shy but sensing that this is going to be an important person in his life—a relative, after all, which we are short of—starts dragging out all his toys one by one for Dana to admire. He tries to get her attention with each one. She stops and pulls him into a dance with her while Grace Slick belts out a song about some pills making you larger and some pills making you small. Then she sinks down on the rug and really looks closely at the mechanism on Simon's toy backhoe, as though she's never seen anything more interesting.

  "Look at this adorable boy!" she cries, and I suddenly love her for noticing him and seeing that he needs her to love the backhoe as much as he does, and a few minutes later I also love the way she just casually takes Teddy's arm and the three of them sway together, Dana and Teddy serenading me while I'm cooking, and Simon watching them with smiling, amazed eyes.

  ***

  It doesn’t take long for word to get out somehow that she's back. First, Maggie calls and wants the whole lowdown. Dana gets on the phone and squeals to her for a while: "I'm back! I'm back!" Then, after that, Leon stops by to bring back a jar of nails he'd borrowed, and is overwhelmed to see her. He has to keep dabbing his eyes while he gives her lots of fatherly hugs. He tells her about Mavis dying and that he's met a wonderful new woman who agreed, against her better judgment—and against everybody's better judgment for her—to marry him. He says the only thing that makes him happier than that is to think of Dana and me here together again, as sisters. "Your father would have wanted this," he says with watery eyes, and hugs us both.

  I resolve again to stop minding Dana's quirks and to be nicer to her.

  After they leave, Dana says, "So does that horrible Gracie still live here?"

  "Gracie? Why do you think she's horrible?"

  She rolls her eyes. "Well, don't you?"

  "No. I like her. She's wonderful to us. She'd be here now, I'm sure, but she went out to dinner with a friend."

  "Oh, really? Wow. I thought for sure she would have moved on to Provincetown or Northampton or someplace where she could have found some cute little chicks..."

  "No," I say. "She stayed." I can't remember if Dana had a problem with the fact that Gracie was gay, or if she didn't like it that she was Momma's best friend, or just what it is she could be objecting to. And before I can even think more about it, the oven timer goes off, and I get busy putting food on the tray, lining up the drinks, giving the salad a final toss. Finally we take our plates to the picnic table on the porch. It's dark, so I light some candles.

  Dana takes a deep breath and flings her arms out wide, ready to make another pronouncement. "The smells of home!" she says. "You know, Willems has a theory that smell can actually reactivate all those centers of your brain, and you actually change the chemistry and can go back and see where your personality came from. He says you've reentered the force field that made you who you are, and that is a sacred place to be."

  Teddy laughs indulgently and puts a huge helping of macaroni on his plate. "And just who is Willems?" he says.

  "Oh, now, you haven't heard about Willems?" I say. "Willems is the love of Dana's life, past, present, and future, and he's big on theories about force fields."

  Dana makes a face at me, and Teddy smiles at her and says, "Oh, is that so? How nice to have your future of love all sewn up!"

  "It would be very nice," she says, and laughs. "Too bad he's married." She takes a drink of Southern Comfort and looks around at us. "But, then again, if he wasn't—hell, then I'd have to actually do somethin' about him, like get my act together, you know."

  "Well," says Teddy. "You don't seem that far from getting your act together, if you ask me."

  I look up just in time to see something, just a little zzzt, pass between them.

  ***

  Here’s something weird. She doesn't eat. I've compulsively gulped down about three huge helpings of mac and cheese when I notice that Dana has just pushed hers around her plate for a while, ingesting only a micron or two, and now has taken out a cigarette. This irritates me, after all the work I did making the stuff for her. And now she's fouling the air with smoke? I don't think so. So I clear my throat and tell her that we don't really let people smoke on the porch or in the house. I tilt my head toward Simon to indicate that he might be the reason for this. He's digging into his mac and cheese.

  "Can't smoke? What do you mean, I can't smoke?" she says and laughs. "Ohhhh, yeah, I forgot. I'm in Connecticut now, not the good ole South. In Texas, everybody still smokes. They're very civilized there when it comes to lettin' people have a good time."

  "Well," I say tightly, "if you recall, I never did let you smoke in the house."

  "Still—the porch is outside, and there is a breeze. I don't see what the big deal is with smoking here."

  "The smoke goes inside," I say. "The porch is near the doors and windows."

  Teddy shoots me the aren't-you-being-a-little-unreasonable look. I frown at him.

  "Well," says Dana with a bitter little laugh, "then I guess I'll just have to go down on the beach to smoke. That's okay, isn't it? Doesn't interfere with the gills of the fish or anything?" She stands up.

  "I think cigarette smoke could only be an improvement on the horrible, unhealthy smell that's already down there," Teddy says.

  She laughs and looks at him. "So, big guy, you want to come down to the beach and keep me company while I perform a death-defying unhealthy act?"

  "That's it?" I say. "You're not going to eat the macaroni and cheese I made?"

  "Oh." She looks down at her plate, as if she's surprised all that food is still there. "You know what? I should have said something before. I don't really like to eat."

  "You don't like to eat," I say flatly.

  Simon gets out of his chair and sits on the floor to play with his toys.

  "No," Dana says. "It's not my thing, really. I mean, this looks delicious, and I know this is really good stuff that you made and all that, but eating—well, lately, it mostly makes me feel sick. God knows what's wrong with me, but, hey, it keeps me thin not eating, so I say, why not just go with it?"

  "Maybe you should get that checked out," I say, gathering up the plates.

  She makes no move to help, just looks over at Teddy and smiles. "You comin', Teddy?"

  He says he is, and shrugs at me apologetically. I wave him off. Fine. Go. "You might want to kiss Simon goodnight, because I'm putting him to bed while you're gone," I tell him, at which point Simon looks up from playing with his dinosaurs on the porch floor and starts protesting that he wants Auntie Dana to read him his stories and put him to sleep.

  "Nope," I say cheerfully. "You've got me tonight."

  "No! No! Auntie Dana! Auntie Dana can put me to bed tonight!" he yells. This really is one of the drawbacks nobody ever tells you about having childre
n, the way they will turn on you in a heartbeat. I try to beam my most pointed I-Am-the-Mother expression in his direction, but he is having none of it. He goes over and hangs onto Dana's leg. She laughs and tells him that she would just love to put him to bed, but right now she has a blinding headache and she needs a cigarette almost worse than she's ever needed one in her whole life. "When you grow up, you'll understand," she says, and then sees my face and amends her remark to "Well, maybe you won't ever understand the need for cigarettes, but you'll no doubt need something very badly. And so I promise to put you to bed tomorrow night and we'll look at all your toys, I promise. It'll be fun."

  Simon and I watch as she and Teddy head down to the beach. She's saying, "Now have you always been Teddy or are you really a secret Theodore? Or an Edward? I'm just Dana. Dana Isabella, which I never thought went together. You know?"

  Teddy is going to come back in a psychotic trance from all this talking she does, I think.

  I look over at Simon. "Well, what do you think?" I ask him. "You like having an auntie, huh?"

  "I think tomorrow she's going to give me gum," he says.

  "Do you want gum?"

  "I'm ready," he says grimly.

  11

  After I read the stories and sing the songs and get Simon tucked in, I go across the hall to the spare bedroom where Dana will sleep, and put clean sheets on the bed and straighten the desk. The room is not messy, exactly, just very tiny and cozy, with a sloped ceiling. It's the official guest room, although I can't remember the last time anybody slept here. While it waits for visitors, it serves as a kind of miscellaneous room, a borrowed room that belongs only to the past, a room filled with boxes of Christmas ornaments and old photo albums, stacks of art books, old bills, books, and things I never want to think about: my mother's unfinished artwork, invoices for home repairs, tax records, all that stuff I've had to force the adult in me to take care of. Now I put these things in the closet and close the lace window curtains. If Dana is staying—well, then I suppose we'll need to fix this up more.