Entering Normal (11 page)

CHAPTER 11

ROSE

ROSE HAS HEARD THIS ALL BEFORE. HALFWAY INTO THE regular season and the Patriots have already lost four games. “Same old story,” Ned grumbles. “The quarterback can't do it alone. You've got to have a running game.”

She looks up from measuring coffee to see Willard Scott sending off birthday wishes. A face flashes on the screen—dried apple face, all wrinkles, nose, and chin—a face so old it's impossible to tell whether it's a man or a woman. Rose has observed how when a person gets really old, all gender drops away. She can't imagine why anyone on earth would want to live to be one hundred anyway, robbed of everything, even gender. She certainly doesn't. A name—
Katherine Waite,
103, Courtland, Kansas
—scrolls beneath the withered face.

Ned sets aside the newspaper. “It's best if you don't get mixed up with that one,” he says.

She stares at him. Why on earth would she want to get involved with a stranger living in Kansas?

“Her,” he says, jerking his head to indicate the house next door. “The fruitcake. I'm just saying, it's wise to keep your distance.”

“Oh,” she says and pours water through the Mr. Coffee machine. The itchy spot on her belly starts up, and she gives it a quick scratch.

“Listen to me, Rose,” Ned continues. “I know her type. She's the kind who makes a mess of her life and then expects other people to clean it up.”

“I guess,” Rose says.

“You guess? I told you the minute I saw her that she was nothing but trouble. Flouncing into the station asking to use our phone, spouting language that would make a trucker blush. A fruitcake.”

“Yes,” Rose agrees. Beneath her dress and slip and panties, the spot glows, halfway between an itch and a burn. Lymph nodes. Chemo, she thinks. Would it be so bad? What does she really have to live for?

“Dressing in clothes not fit for a twelve-year-old. She's got Ty so turned around he doesn't know a wrench from a pair of pliers.”

Rose would just as soon not get started in on Tyrone Miller. She can't figure out how Ned developed such a soft spot for him or why, in spite of his background, Ned took him on at the station, giving him a chance when no one else would.

“Going to the hospital with her was one thing,” Ned continues, “but you have to stop it now, nip it in the bud. Next thing, she'll have you baby-sitting. The best thing to do is just stay clear of her.”

“You're right,” she says. He doesn't have to lecture her. Despite yesterday's trip to Mercy Memorial, she has absolutely no intention of any further involvement with Opal Gates or her boy. The way lies just
tripped
off that girl's tongue. Rose wouldn't put anything past her.

She scrambles Ned's eggs, stirs them into the fry pan, cooking them until they are dry the way he likes them. Rubbery, to her taste. She prefers eggs fluffy and moist, but over the years has adjusted to eating them Ned's way. It's easier than cooking two batches. She spoons his breakfast onto a plate.

“I feel sorry for the poor son of a bitch who married her.” Ned forks the eggs on a slice of toast and folds it into a sandwich, a habit that drives Rose crazy. “Any fool can see why he left her.”

How can he be so sure Opal isn't the one who wanted out of the relationship? And wouldn't he go right through the roof to hear she isn't even married? Rose can only imagine what he'd have to say if he knew how she lied for Opal at the hospital.

“More coffee?” she asks.

“Half a cup,” he says, holding out his mug, an oversized plastic cup, the interior discolored a deep nut brown. There is a toast crumb on the corner of his mouth. She wishes he would use his napkin. Thirty-six years of marriage and she still hasn't gotten him to use a napkin.

“You all right, Rosie?” he asks. There is unexpected concern in his voice, and he's looking right at her. The paper lies neglected on the table. Rose allows herself one weak moment when she nearly tells him all that she has locked inside. Not just about yesterday and how she'd told the doctor she was there when the boy got hurt, but about the mole on her stomach and about what happened at the writing class, and most of all about how she had refused to let Todd use the car, sending him off with Jimmy to die in that accident. This weight lies so heavy in her heart she can't even imagine the relief of setting it free. She very nearly sets it out on the table right then and there, spilling it like a blob of grease from one of the engines Ned is always repairing. Tell him and let him fix it. But the time for fixing things is long gone, and she allows the moment to pass.

“I'm fine.”

“What's on your agenda today?” he asks.

She imagines the day yawning ahead, but before she can manage a word he has turned his attention back to the sports pages.

THROUGHOUT THE MORNING SHE HALF EXPECTS TO HEAR from Opal, and when the phone finally rings she picks it up without stopping to think. Ned doesn't need to worry. She isn't going to get further involved. She just wants to hear that the boy is all right.

When she hears the voice on the other end of the wire, she nearly drops the phone.

“Hello, Rose. This is Anderson Jeffrey. From the college.” As if she could have forgotten. As if she knows so many men he needs to identify himself. As if she has shamed herself in front of so many of those men.

“Don't hang up, Rose. Please, don't hang up.” He is speaking in one long breath so that it sounds like “fromthecollegedonthanguprosepleasedonthangup.”

“Yes?” She is surprised to hear how normal her voice sounds.

“Hello, Rose,” he says, slower now that he sees she isn't going to hang up.

“Hello,” she parrots back, wondering how many times they are going to toss the greeting back and forth.

“How are you?”

“Fine. I'm fine.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” she says firmly.

“I'm glad.” He waits, but she doesn't offer more. “I need to talk with you,” he finally says. “Can we talk, Rose?”

A memory—his lips on hers—cuts off all possibility of speech. Her stomach is itching like crazy, and she pushes her fingertips against the spot, presses hard.

THE SECOND DAY OF CLASS, SHE SAT AT THE SAME DESK she had the first time, laid out her paper and pencil, got set to write out her grocery list. They were out of eggs, she knew. She planned on waiting until after class to tell him she was dropping out.

“We'll do more ‘hot writing,' ” he told them, “but this time we'll start with memory. Memory—this alluvial morass—is the territory of the writer.”

Alluvial morass?
Rose didn't have the slightest idea what he was talking about, but a shiver of unease rippled through her.

“Begin with this phrase: ‘I remember.' And write a list of things.”

“What?” She was so surprised by his directions that the question popped right out.

Anderson Jeffrey looked straight at her and smiled.
“I remember,”
he repeated. “Make a list of all the things you remember.”

A second ripple of anxiety took hold, but she carefully wrote
I
remember
. The others in the room were scribbling noisily, but she thought a moment and finally put down
picking strawberries with
Momma
. This memory—surfacing out of nowhere—gave her courage.
Dad's work shoes,
she wrote next, amazed at how clearly she could see them. The creases across the instep, toes turned up, the mismatched laces. What a funny thing to remember after all these years.
Tootsie,
she wrote, thinking of the calico kitten she had as a child.
Orange Popsicles.
And then, before her mind had even grasped what was happening or could catch up with her hand, she wrote
Todd. I remember Todd.

Once her hand set that sentence to paper, it refused to stop.

Her pen moved across that paper like she had been waiting five years to get this down. She wrote all about Todd and how she missed him and how one minute a person could be in your life, laughing and smiling and driving you crazy with their foolishness, and then the next, with no warning, they were gone. All the words you never got a chance to say would be locked up inside you, and whatever happened to words locked inside? Where did they go?

Then she started writing about Todd's friend Jimmy, who walked away from that crash with no more than a scratch. Really, a scratch. People said things like that, in exaggeration, but it was true. Jimmy had a small red scratch on his right arm, and Todd was dead. Today Jimmy was twenty-two and had two kids of his own. And then she wrote about how she hated Jimmy, and how Reverend Wills said it was a sin to hate and she needed to forgive. She said that she had reached forgiveness so as to please the Reverend and Ned, but the hate was still there. Sometimes she thought it was the only thing that kept her alive, and so she put that down, too. She wrote how at the funeral she overheard someone say it was a miracle that Jimmy hadn't died in the crash too, but it wasn't a miracle to her.

About this point in the writing, she knew she would have to burn that paper and everything she had committed to it. It wasn't “hot writing”; it was scalding—jumping and rolling all of its own power, like the pot of water when she sterilized canning jars or Todd's baby bottles when she prepared them for his formula, after she stopped nursing him.

Then she wrote about secrets and regret. Frightful secrets. Grim regret. She wrote about how after the accident people had consoled her.
It's not your fault. You mustn't blame yourself.
But the terrible thing was it
was
her fault. She should have let Todd take her car, and then he wouldn't have been in the truck with Jimmy Sommers. She would have to live with the pain and guilt of that for the rest of her life. She wrote about Todd's birthday and how the first year after he died she waited all day for Ned to say something about it, to mention it, but he never did. He just went on like it was an ordinary day like any other, and she realized then he had forgotten. She wrote about how for a while she thought about leaving Ned even though she knew she was just fooling herself. To leave someone, you had to have someplace waiting for you.

About this time in the writing, she became aware of Anderson Jeffrey standing by her. When she looked up, every eye in the room was focused on her. The professor had already collected the other papers and was reaching for hers. It never
occurred
to her he would want to take what they had written. Before she could object, she felt it gliding from her fingers to his.

In the cab, on the way home, she tried to figure a way to get that paper back. One more week, she vowed. She would go back one more time so she could get that paper back.

The following week, she planned on speaking to him after class. During the hour, she was careful to write about safe things, things like the history of Normal, things that wouldn't need to be burned after she wrote them, things that didn't come out of any
alluvial morass
.

At the end of the class, before she could say a word, Anderson Jeffrey asked to see her. He led her to his office, a small room with a plain oak desk like the one in Doc Blessing's office and a sofa so covered with stacks of papers and books that there wasn't an inch free to sit on. Immediately she saw that he was the kind of person who wouldn't keep a spare key to his car. The kind of man who automatically expected other people to take care of locked cars and dirty dishes. She wondered what he wanted and how soon she could leave, but he talked about her writing and what he called her raw talent. For an instant, something close to pleasure flickered inside, and she remembered her tenth grade teacher, Mrs. Finney, who had told her once that she was a “smart girl.” But then the warmth faded. She let him talk, not listening to the words, only the slightly hypnotic voice that matched his clean fingernails. “I'll see you next week,” he said when he opened the door for her, letting his arm brush against hers. “Yes,” she answered, so grateful to escape she forgot to ask for her paper, forgot to tell him she wasn't coming back. The next week in class he paid special attention to her, although she wasn't the prettiest or the thinnest or, Lord knows, the youngest. And he asked her to come to his office again so they could discuss her writing, although she had no idea what in the world he could possibly find to say about it.

The second time she followed Mr. Anderson Jeffrey to his office, she noticed right off that the sofa was cleared off, revealing an ugly plaid fabric. She should have left right then, but she let him lead her over to the couch. She couldn't think or talk or even move. Paralyzed, she just let him kiss her. It was like drowning would be in the final moments after you stopped fighting it.

ROSE MANAGES TO PULL HERSELF TOGETHER ENOUGH TO tell Anderson Jeffrey that she can't talk now.

“Will you call me back?”

“Yes,” she says, although she has absolutely no intention of doing this.

“Promise,” he pushes.

“Yes,” she says again.

“Do you have a pencil handy? I'll give you my home number.”

She would rather strip naked on the Town Square in front of Colonel Normal's statue than take down his phone number.

At last she manages to get rid of him. She doesn't even want to think of why he wants to see her. Take care of who you let into your life, she says to herself. Take care of who you let in, because once you let someone in, it's not so easy to get them out. But it is Opal Gates, not Anderson Jeffrey, she is thinking about.

After she hangs up, she looks out toward the Montgomery place. In spite of herself, she wonders about Opal, wonders how Zack is.

At that moment, she sees Ty Miller pulling up the Montgomerys' drive. She watches as he crosses the lawn and climbs the front steps. Well, it seems as if that girl doesn't have to go looking for trouble. It will come looking for her.