Pretending Normal (11 page)

I stay very busy most days, but the nights swallow me with sadness
, until one morning the sadness rolls away and anger takes over. Peter let me believe he was someone he wasn’t, let me believe in something he didn’t. I am not so foolish as to realize he did not once apologize, or say he would stop pushing.

Pretend.
That’s what he wanted me to do. Or better yet, separate the two Peters—the one with the girlfriend named Sara Polokovich who drives around in a blue Chevelle and shares double dips and French fries at Benny’s Hot Dog Deluxe, and the other Peter, the one who steals Black Beauties and ‘ludes’ from his psychiatrist father and sells them on the street.

Well, no thank you.

It is almost seven days before Kay finds out Peter
and me. I have just combed more lemon juice through my hair and am spread out in the backyard on my belly, slathered in Coppertone. The sun is mid-August brutal, the kind that beats down so hard you can feel your heart pulsing against your chest, hear it thumping in your ears.

“Sara!
Sara!”

I crack open an eye.
“Hey.”

“Oh, Sara”
—she crouches on her knees, her lips pulled down—“I have some terrible news.”

“What?”

Kay
leans closer, whispers in my ear, “It’s about Peter.”

She
knows Peter is a pusher.
I open my mouth to tell her that I didn’t know, that sometimes you just don’t know.

“I saw him kissing Kelly Jordan.”
She presses one hand to her mouth as though to pull the words back. “I’m so sorry. I know you were crazy about him.”

Well. My gut
pumps bile to my throat. Does Kelly Jordan think it’s okay for him to keep ‘ludes under the floor mat of his Chevelle? What if he sells it to her friends, maybe her little sister, Moira? I bet Kelly Jordan doesn’t know Peter is Jekyll and Hyde. Come to think of it, she probably doesn’t even know who Jekyll and Hyde are.

“Say something, Sara.
I didn’t know if I should tell you, but I didn’t want you to hear it from anybody else.”

“It’s okay, really.”
Funny, how she is worried about hurting my feelings. It has been okay for her to point at my hair and tell me that braids went out five years ago and tan pants make my butt look big and have I ever noticed that my right ear is higher than my left?
Just a little, but I notice,
she says. And now she is worried about me.

“I don’t understand,” Kay says
. “He’s your boyfriend.”

“Was.
Not anymore.”

“You broke up?
When? Why didn’t you tell me?”

I lift a shoulder.
“I really didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Oh.”
She looks at me then, that knowing of a thirteen-year old. “He dumped you, huh?”

Sometimes a lie is easier than the truth.
“Yeah.”

“Bastard,” she whispers.
“No good piece of shit
.”

“That about sums it up.”

I can’t avoid Jerry Jedinski forever. He’ll find me, poke around the truth, listen to my story, poke a little more and draw his own conclusions, right or wrong. What am I going to tell him? Maybe nothing, maybe I’ll wait and see what he tells me. It has been nine days since Peter and I broke up, enough time for Jerry to catch the scoop floating around, distorted and re-worked most likely, but a story, nonetheless.

I haven’t seen much of him since Peter and I got together.
When he is around, Jerry stays in his driveway, his gaze fixed on the white net with the black rim. If I call to him, he’ll half-turn, wave, then pivot back for a quick jump shot. After the shot, which he makes ninety-eight percent of the time, he’ll sneak a peak in my direction to see if I noticed, as if to say,
See, see what I can do? I don’t need you
.

Twinges of guilt prick me, ooze regret.
Jerry’s a really great guy. Kind, considerate, attentive. Drug-free. But he’s just a friend and no matter how I twist it, he is still just Jerry. I’m sorry he’s more faithful than Jester, the only dog I ever owned, who got killed by a truck when I was thirteen. And I’m sorry his little sister, Ginny, squealed about the picture of me he has pinned to the bulletin board in his bedroom. Sorry, too, that I know he times his basketball practice to the exact minute I will be in the backyard, sunbathing in my two-piece.

But most of all, I am sorry he is the one who introduced me to Peter that day when I was walking home from the A&P after buying Kay
’s Kotex. In some bizarre way, it feels like I betrayed Jerry, choosing Peter instead. Jerry comes to me the next day, all six foot three of him sauntering across the lawn like a giraffe trying to grow into its body. It is late afternoon and I am stretched out on a blanket near my mother’s rosebushes, reading
War and Peace
.

“Hey,” he says.

I shield my eyes with my hand. “Hey.”

He fishes his hands around in his back pockets, kicks the grass with the toe of his sneaker.
“What you been up to?”

I shrug.
“Not much.”

“Ready for school?”

“Kinda.”

“Y
eah, me too, I guess. These last couple weeks will fly.”

“Y
eah.”

“
This is going to be a busy year for me. Coach thinks I’ll get recruited by Pitt and Duquesne. Maybe Marquette or St. Bonaventure, too.”

“
Wow. That’s really great. I’m happy for you.”

He nods, pushes his glasses back in place with his index finger.
“Coach says if I have another season like the last one, I could get a full ride.”

“
I hope you do. I’ll come watch you.”

“Really?”
His face turns a dull red.

“Sure.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

I pluck at the blanket, making small peaks with the fabric and wait. A lawn mower drones in the background, fills the quiet of the day with its steady monotony. Jerry kicks another tuft of grass with the toe of his sneaker. I construct another yellow blanket peak. And still I wait.

“Sara
?”

“Yes?”
I jerk my head up.

“
How can you read that stuff?” He points to
War and Peace.

“It’s a classic.”

“It’s four inches thick.”

I laugh.
“I can’t shoot a basketball. I need books like these to get me a scholarship.”

“Is
U Penn still your first choice?”

“Yes.”

“I was thinking about looking there, but,”—he scratches his head—“I don’t think my grades are high enough to get in, which means they won’t be high enough to stay in.”

“Do what’s best for you, Jerry.”

He nods and clears his throat. “I heard about you and Peter.”

And here it is, slapped in my face.
“I thought you would.” I twist the blanket peak between my fingers.

“Word has it he broke up with you to take out Kelly Jordan.”

“Uh-huh,” I say. I hate the sound of that.

“Is it true?” Jerry asks.

“What?”

“Did he dump you for Kelly Jordan?”

I shrug. “Does it matter? It’s over.”

He looks away.
“It matters to me.”

“I guess it was kind of mutual.”

“Yeah, well, I’m glad. Not because of me or anything,” he says, his words tripping over one another in an awkward rush. “It’s just that he’s not good for you.”

“Why do you say that?”
Maybe he does know about Peter, after all.

Jerry’s soft gray eyes
shine behind his glasses. “This is hard, Sara. I know you really liked the guy.”

“So tell me
what you know about Peter.”

“Remember when I told you he hid a flask under his seat and that he smoked, too?”

I nod, remembering also that I was certain Jerry was a liar.

“There’s more.
Last Saturday, there was a party. Beer, pot, you know the kind. I heard he was invited and he brought a ton of pills.”

I s
tare at my little finger, the long, gentle sloping of nail, pale pink with a half-moon at the base. Peter said I had the hands of a pianist.

“They say he’s a pusher, Sara.
They say he’s the one. Rudy Minnoni just runs beer. It’s Peter who’s behind the drugs. And they say his mother’s nuts, like loony-farm nuts. Parades around the house all dressed up from head to toe, but never goes anywhere. Some say she tried to kill herself once. After her baby girl died.” He lowers his voice. “With a knife. Peter found her. Blood everywhere.” He pauses, looks at me. “I heard she’s always drunk, like every day and that’s why Dr. Donnelly has to keep moving around so people won’t find out about her. You think that’s true? You think she tried to kill herself?”

I can’t speak
. The words are glued to the roof of my mouth. Maybe Frank is right. Maybe there are a lot of people walking around who are already dead, and maybe Suzanne Donnelly is one of them.

***

It is early Sunday afternoon and Nina and I have promised Conchetta a manicure. I’ve got cotton balls and cuticle oil stuffed in my purse. Nina has three Revlon polishes and a topcoat, all of which she promises are hers. We’re meeting at Nina’s in five minutes and I’m going to be late. I race downstairs and am halfway out the door when Frank calls me from the garage.

“Sara!
Come here a minute.”

Shit.
“Yes?” I peek my head in the garage.

“Isn’t she a beauty?
” He runs his sausage-size fingers over the car’s newly polished back fender. “Your mother always loved this car. I bought it when we were first married.” It is a 1957 Chevrolet, white and red, with a new carburetor and a radio that hasn’t worked since 1972. One of these days, he says he’s going to fix it.

“Nothing beats the smell of a new car, you know that?”
He pats the rear bumper. “Every time you get into it, the newness hits you in the face and makes you smile.” His eyes glaze, meet mine. “I remember the day I bought this baby. We couldn’t afford a car like this, not with my pay back then, but your mother wanted me to have it, said not to wait, because things change, situations change. People change.” He laughs. “That’s what she said, ‘people change’. You should have seen us back then, Sara, riding around town in this baby. We were some lookers, your Mother and I.”

Now, I am really going to be late getting to Nina’s.
Shit, shit, shit.

“She was a beautiful woman.”

“I know.”

“All that brown hair, the color of maple syrup
… and those eyes,” he goes on, lost in his own memories. “Like a Hershey’s candy bar.”

“I’m going now
, okay?”

“She had a smile, too.”

“I’ll be at Nina’s. See you in a little while.” I ease out the door.

“And that laugh...”
He is still staring at the cloth in his hand, thinking I am sure of my mother, how she was, how they were together, and perhaps it is easier to think of their past, remember what they were, not what they became.

Maria Tegretti has the life I want, a life hundreds of mil
es away from Norwood. Her latest letter to Nina is the only thing that keeps me from collapsing into bed and not getting out again. Hope is stamped on the pages of flowered stationery, covered with curlicue writing and heart-dotted periods.

“Maria says she’s really sorry about your Mom.” Nina and I are stretched out on the old bedspread next to the rosebushes.

“How
did she find out?” I ask, settling my gaze on the blueness of the sky. How can there be such beauty in such a sad world?

“Mom called her.”

“Maria got a phone?”

“It’s the neighbor lady’s but she
lets Maria call for emergencies.”

“Oh.”

“She told Mom that with your brains, you could go to Temple or even U Penn. Wouldn’t that be something, if we ended up in Philly with Maria?”

Nina doesn’t care that her sister didn’t include her in the brains comment, because she’ll be the first to tell you college isn’t on her ‘to do’ list.
But she’s smart in ways most of us aren’t. She can figure a person out just by watching the way he walks, or how he scratches his chin. And she doesn’t have to hear the words to know what he’s thinking. It’s all there in his eyes. Nina always knows.

“We could move to Philly when we graduate,” she says.
“You could go to U Penn and I’d get a job with Maria at the newspaper. Couldn’t you see me as a newspaper reporter? Maria says they always need people who can find a story, and look at her, from the mail room to reporter in four months. Of course, the looks and boobs help.”