Pretending Normal (12 page)

“Nina!”

“What? Check out
Cosmopolitan
or even
Redbook.
That’s what it’s all about, especially the boobs.”

“You think Maria got moved to reporter because of her boobs?”

“No, I said it helped. Anyway, who cares? I’m going to have to work extra hard because I don’t have boobs or looks.”

“Yes, you do.”

She scowls. “If there’s one thing I hate, it’s my best friend lying to me.” Nina lifts her shirt, exposes a junior cotton bra. “See.” She flings the shirt down over her chest. “Anyway, I’m going to order a padded one from Sears.”

“You are?”

“Yeah, and one for Conchetta, too, not padded, obviously. God, she needs to get rid of that old Playtex thing. Do you really think it was her Grandma’s?”

“Stop.
What else did Maria have to say?”

“Well, she went to dinner with Fernando on Tuesday, the movies with Edward on Wednesday, coffee with Charles on Thursday, and there was one more
… Simon, that’s it. She went dancing with Simon on Saturday.”

“Which one does she like best?”

“She likes them all.” Nina laughs. “The old man would croak if he knew. He had a fit when she went to the Prom with Danny Morelli and came home at five after midnight. Just think, Sara, in a few more years, we’ll be out of here, and then we can do anything we want.”

“Read the letter to me again,” I say, laying my head against the softness of the old bedspread.
My eyes drift shut, my breath relaxes. “Read slow, so I can pretend I’m already there...”

“
Hey, tell your dad thanks for yesterday.”

Nina knows I don’t like to talk about Frank.
“What did he do now?” I keep my eyes closed so she can’t see how much I don’t want to hear this.

“
He picked up my mom on route three twenty-one and gave her a ride home.”

“Did her car break down?”

“No, that asshole father of mine got pissed and booted her out of the car, left her six miles from Norwood. Can you imagine? I am so royally pissed at him.” She lets out a long breath, “Thank God for your dad.”

Thank God?

“I guess he gave her twenty bucks and told her to call him if she gets stuck again. He tried to talk her into taking us kids and leaving for Aunt Florence’s, even said he’d drive her, but she said no.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, and then he said if she got another black eye, he was going to kick the shit out of Leo Tegretti.”

“Now that I believe.”

***

T-Rex enters our lives with a yip, a yelp, and a puddle in the middle of the kitchen floor.
Who would have thought Frank would let another dog in the house after Jester got run over? But he does, and not only that, he’s the one who brings him home.

“The janitor found him sleeping in one of the sorting bins,” he says.
“They were going to call the pound. Look at the ugly bastard. They would have gassed him.”

T-Rex, a name Frank dubbed him because the dog’s ears and head make up seventy-five percent of his tan body and his teeth another ten, looks like a mix of Bassett hound,
bulldog, and poodle. Frank’s right—he’s ugly.

Aren’t dogs supposed to be the best judges of people?
Then why is T-Rex obsessed with following Frank everywhere, even the bathroom? Aunt Irene avoids T-Rex. She says he smells and is ‘displeasing’ to look at. He does have the head of a kickball screwed to the body of an empty paper towel roll and the dinosaur teeth are a little intimidating, but after a while, his ugliness is kind of cute. Aunt Irene doesn’t think so.

She’s just arrived, bringing a tray of baked ziti, lasagna, and stuffed pork chops. Yesterday, Uncle Stan delivered a batch of chili, fried chicken and a Tupperware container of potato salad.
They continue to put food in our stomachs, filling us up, but we have never felt emptier.

“Is that animal in the house?” she asks from the front porch.

“No, he’s in the garage.
Do you want me to get anything out of the car?” I ask.

“Actually, yes. I got you and Kay a little something. There are two packages on the back seat, would you bring them in?” Today she is wearing a green sleeveless top and a bright pink skirt… a watermelon with breasts.

“Sure, be right back.”
I am hoping the ‘somethings’ are not more wide hair bands with ladybugs and bumblebees, like the ones she gave us the other day. But when I sift through the folds of pink and yellow tissue paper to expose the gift, I
wish
it were another hair band. Instead, there’s an orange and green scarf dotted with fuchsia butterflies.

“Kay’s is the same pattern but in yellow and red with powder blue butterflies.
Yours is more sophisticated,” she says, lowering her voice.

“Thank you, Aunt Irene.”

“You are so welcome, sweetheart.” She flings her arms around my waist, pulls me close. “There’s so much more where that came from. We’re going to get through this, you’ll see.” She sniffs. “We’ll all get through this.” Then, she releases me. “Is your father here?”

“He’s in the garage.”

“Hmm.”
It is such a small sound, almost like she’s clearing her throat, but I hear the distaste. He thinks she’s a silly piece of cotton candy and she calls him a rude, intolerable beast.

She adjusts the shoulder strap of her pink purse and draws in a breath. “Why didn’t you tell me about the knife?”

“What knife?”

She arches a perfect brow.
“The one your father chased you up the stairs with.”

Damn Kay.
“He didn’t mean it,” I say. “It was a mistake.”

“The kind of mistake people make when they drink too much?”
She runs a hand over my hair, not waiting for an answer, “I’ll be back in a little while.”

I watch her pink sandals step over the cracked cement and disappear into the garage. This is not going to be good.
They haven’t had a civilized conversation in eight months, not since she accused him of treating Mom like a sheet of used toilet paper. That’s when he threw her out of the house, but Mom gave it right back to him, said if he tried to keep her sister from coming here, she’d pack us up for the weekend, go to
Irene’s
. He backed down then, and he’s been decent about taking her food since the funeral, probably because of us.

I have to know what they’re saying, so I sneak behind the garage, between the evergreen bushes, and listen at the open window.

“I know about the knife, Frank.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“The one you tried to attack Sara with, I know about it.”

“It was just a misunderstanding.
Sara knows I’d never hurt her.”

“Well Kay, doesn’t
. She’s scared to death of you.”

“Bullshit.”

“Come on, Frank, be honest. You can’t take care of them. Let them come with Stan and me.”

“Like hell.
They’re mine and they’re not going anywhere.” These last words slur, bump into one another.

“Stan and I talked it over.
The girls should come and stay with us for a while.” Pause. “Just until you get yourself together.”

“Bullshit.”

“Helen would have wanted it this way.”

“What the hell do you know what Helen would have wanted?
Helen never let anybody know what she wanted, never even told me she was having problems, just kept pushing herself, like some goddamn martyr… and look what it got her.” His voice cracks. “Dead. Fucking dead. Dammit, she should have told me. What are you staring at?”

“Nothing.”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“Nobody blames you for anything, Frank.”

“Everybody blames me for everything… every fucking thing.”

“That’s not true.”

“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to, an idiot?”

I have to see what’s going on inside.
There’s a stack of cinder blocks lined along the edge of the garage so I move a few on top of each other and climb up. My nose reaches the bottom of the window, just enough to see through the mud-streaked glass. They are close, three feet apart, the sun shining on the back of Aunt Irene’s Clairol #27 head.

“Answer me.”
He steps closer, raises his fist. “Do you think I’m a fucking idiot?”

“Nobody blames you, it was God’s will.”

“God’s will?” he barks. “God had nothing to do with it.”

She clears her throat and says,
“I’ve come to talk about the girls.”

“You mean,
my
girls?”

She nods her cotton
-candy head. “You’ve been under a lot of stress.”

“Save the sympathy.”
He snatches a glass from his workbench and swallows.

“You have a problem.”

“I don’t have any problem.”

“Helen told me if you buy a fifth on Monday night it’s done by Wednesday before dinner.”

There it is, cold and flat, between them.
He jerks his head around, lifts his glass, drains it. “I don’t need it,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I like it.”

“Maybe a little too much.”

“Get the hell out of here.”

“Not until I talk to you.
The girls need a role model, a mother”—she pauses—“someone who can help them grow into healthy, well-adjusted young women.”

He sloshes more Cutty Sark into his glass, takes another swig, then another.

“Stan and I have been talking and we think since you’ve been under so much stress, with Helen’s death and all, that maybe—”

“No.”

“At least until—”

“
I said no.”

“You can’t take care of those girls.
Not when you’re drunk half the time.”

“Get out.”

“Can’t you see—”

“I said get out.”

“There are laws to protect children from unfit parents, laws that can take them away from you.”

He slams the glass down on the bench.
“I’ll kill anybody who tries to take my girls from me. Now get out and don’t come back here again.”

Her pink sandals are planted firmly on the cement.
“You can’t do this, Frank.”

He pivots, grabs his
shotgun and has it cocked and aimed at her head in less than five seconds. “Get the hell out.”

“Okay, take it easy. I’m leaving.”
She inches back. “I’m leaving now.” This is when T-Rex bares his dinosaur teeth and starts growling. The pink sandals speed up, fast, faster, until she’s backed right out of the garage, taking with her any chance of our escape.

We don’t mention Aunt Irene again after that day, at least not in front of him.
He only brings her name up one time. It is the next evening, at dinner.

“Did your aunt send that?”

He’s looking at the tray of lasagna in the middle of the table. “Yes,” I say.

“Throw it out.”

“Throw it out?” I ask.

“The whole damn thing, dish and all
… and get rid of whatever else she sent, too.”

“Then what do you want to eat?”

He shrugs. “I don’t care. Anything but that garbage. She never could cook. Her food makes me want to puke.”

This, from the same man who ate all the fried chicken and potato salad two nights ago?

“Your aunt needs a break.” He’s already getting up from his chair.
“Coming here’s been too much for her.” His lips curve into an odd quirk of a half-smile. “Looks like it’s just you girls and your old man.”

Kay and I paste smiles on our faces, hold them there until he leaves the room, then let them crack and split open.
“What the hell was that about?” Kay asks.

I want to punch something, or someone, anything.

“Sara
? What’s going on?”

“Why
did you have to open your big mouth about the knife?”

“I was scared.
I tried to keep quiet, but I needed to tell someone.”

“You shouldn’t have said anything.
He’s not going to hurt us.”

“I’m miserable here,” Kay whines
. “I’m dying.”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up.” She grabs a fork and digs into a lasagna square smothered with cheese.

“What are you doing?” I whisper.
“He said to throw it out.”

“Just one more bite
.” She shovels a large piece into her mouth. “Mmmm.” Before she finishes chewing, she’s after another bite.

“Kay, stop.
He could come back and check.”

“I’m hungry,” she says around a mouthful of lasagna.
“He’s crazy.” She makes a face at me. “So are you. Here. Try,” she whispers, holding her fork in front of my mouth.