Pretending Normal (21 page)

My head
is light and I am nauseated, but I grab the shovel and bang it against the window until the glass shatters.
You
can’t die, not now. I love you, Dad.
I reach in, shut off the engine. My lungs are heaving, pulling for fresh air. “Dad?” His bulky frame falls forward and slumps over the steering wheel. I open my mouth to scream, yell out the pain and misery of living, the injustice of it all, but nothing comes out, nothing but air and grief and horror. Then everything is black.

Eight days later

“Sara?”

The voice
is familiar.

“Sara, listen to me.”

… a woman's… who?

“They said you moved your fingers last night and you were moaning.
Thank God. I’ve been here every day, waiting for you to come around. The nurses let me sneak in after hours. One of the benefits of being considered eccentric, I guess. People expect you to do strange things, most times they pretend not to notice.” Her voice turns serious. “I know you’re going to pull through, Sara.
I know
.”

…
I almost have it… almost… that voice…

“There’s been quite a stir these past several days.
Normally, I’d let it slide by… you know I’m not one for spreading tales, but I thought you’d want to know… anyway, I figure this town’s gotten enough use out of my name, it’s my turn.”

Ms. O’Grady!

“Peter Donnelly’s gone.”

Peter…

“Jerry told me all about him
… about the two of you.” She clears her throat. “Jerry needed to talk to somebody when all this happened. That boy would do anything for you.
Funny, isn’t it? They’re never the ones we want…”

Peter’s gone.

“The whole Donnelly family’s gone, closed that big, old house and up and took off.
Nobody knows where for sure. I heard Idaho. We know the why though…the boy’s mother ran over Rudy Minnoni last Sunday night, broke both of his legs and his pelvis. Hit and run, but how many people in Norwood have a dark blue Cadillac? Anyway, Ken Jasper was on patrol and he spotted her. She confessed right away when he went to the house, broke down and fell apart.”

Was she wearing a pale melon chiffon dress with matching sandals?

“… seems she never got over her little girl’s death… drowned in a pool on Dr. Donnelly’s birthday… sad… that’s when she took to drinking… some say that’s why the doctor moves around so much, trying to keep his wife’s secret tucked away… you’d think a psychiatrist would see it… and the boy, Peter…”

I know, he sells drugs.

“…he tried to tell Ken he was the one driving the car, that he was the one who hit Rudy.”

Lying for his mother
. Maybe we’re not so different after all.

“Some children will do anything for their parents,” Ms. O’Grady says, her voice oddly quiet
. “And some parents will do anything for their children, even if it means doing something most folks could never imagine.”

L
ike killing yourself?

“Listen to me, Sara
.” She is closer now, her breath warm against my face. “None of this is your fault. We’ll never know what really happened. If he turned the car on and forgot”—her voice drifts off—“or if he turned the car on and
remembered
.”

Remembered he wanted to die?

“The whole town thinks your father was drinking and started the car with the intention of taking a drive, but passed out instead. Maybe that’s what happened. Or, maybe he’d had enough of living and found a way out. Either way, it’s not your fault. Sara? Do you hear me? It’s not your fault.”

Twenty seconds
… I hesitated…

“Jerry Jedinski’s father said he thought he saw you standing outside the garage late that afternoon when he was on his way to work
. Said he didn’t think much of it until he heard the news.”

He’ll figure it out
…

“It caused quite a commotion for several days, everyone wondering what really
happened, most saying they wouldn’t blame you if you had done it. But Jerry told his father it couldn’t have been you.” There is an odd note in her next words as she says, “Because the two of you were in your house the whole time… together… then he left and that’s when you found your father.”

The most honest person I know has turned into a liar because of me.

She clears her throat. “Of course, Mr. Jedinski has pretty much let the matter drop, said he must have been mistaken.”
She strokes my arm. “We’re all counting on you, Sara, me, your mother, your father, your sister, your aunt. We need you to show us, not just how to survive, but how to
live.
”

Her sniffling is getting louder, turning into choking sobs.
My fingers are wet with Ms. O’Grady’s tears. The backs of my eyes burn.

“Show us”
—she squeezes my hand—“
show me
, a fifty-three year old woman who still sneaks behind her father’s garage for a quick smoke, what it means to really live. Do it for your mother and father and for me. For our disappointments and our pathetic existences, for the belief that life is still meant to be lived full force in anticipation and awe. Can you do that?
Will
you do that?”

But I don’t answer
, not in words and not in my heart, because, and this is the most painful part, I just don’t know.

I am sitting on my bed in Aunt Irene’s house
—no, my new house—looking at the latest travel brochure, this one from Orlando, Florida. The cover is plastered with another blond family; mother, father, boy, girl, dressed in coordinating shades of red, their skin a toasted honey almond. The mother and father are standing side by side, watching the boy and girl dig in the sand with red shovels. I take all of this in, but it is their smiles that hold me, their bleached-white gleam making me wonder if this is a real family, or merely one conjured up through paid advertising.

A dull ache runs through me as I study the man and woman, portraying such a united effort of protection, so strong and bold, the keepers of tradition, the guardians of these children who probably aren’t even their
s, but rather some young hopefuls, not brother and sister, either, just kids whose real parents are more interested in contracts and rights than family.

I snatch the brochure off the bed, stuff it in my nightstand.
Aunt Irene has been talking about a trip to Orlando over spring break. If we do go, I am wondering if people will think
we’re
a real family. Will they look at Kay and me, golden brown, our hair streaked from hours in the sun and extra doses of lemon juice, and then at Uncle Stan, the bald spot on his head lobster pink, the freckles sticking out like chicken pox, and will they say,
They look like their mother, don’t they
? And Aunt Irene will beam in one of her ten ‘accentuating’ bathing suits, her skin the same rich gold, hair streaked from a bottle of Clairol #27.

And Kay and I, what will we do?
Will we smile, bright smiles, surface smiles, say things like,
Thank you
, and
Everyone says we do
, all the while knowing we are impostors in our own lives?

And we are impostors, at least I am.

But Kay has delved right into this existence, eager for affection, anxious to please Aunt Irene, even Uncle Stan, who simply stands on the fringes and nods. He lives to make Aunt Irene happy and if adopting her dead sister’s children makes her happy, then fine with him, not that he doesn’t care about us because he does, but Aunt Irene is his star, his twirling comet…

Kay keeps the rose petals from our mother’s bushes in a cut crystal bowl on her dresser.
The yellow and pink ones have curled and faded to light brown, the reds to dusty black. She says she talks to Mom every night, in the darkness of her room, and she
swears
she smells the roses, as though they were still in full bloom.

My petals are pressed between the pages of
War and Peace, Anna Karenina
, and
An American Tragedy
. When they are dry and frail, I will form them in the shape of a rose and gently glue them to a piece of art paper. Then I will frame my one perfect rose. Aunt Irene talks about buying rosebushes for her backyard this spring and she’s even asked us what colors we’d like. She tries, but it’s not the same.

I’ve been watering the African Violets I brought from our house.
The two baby pinks are the only ones left. The mother pink crashed during the move, the purple suffered root rot. But the baby pinks are thriving, bursting forth in full bloom with shiny green leaves stuffed with chlorophyll.

I’ve only seen Jerry once, just after I got here.
He drove down one Saturday in his father’s pickup. We were sitting on Aunt Irene’s pink and blue couch in the living room, a few feet separating us, watching a re-run of
Hogan’s Heroes
and eating Cracker Jacks.

“Jerry.
I… I want to…”

He held up his hand, stopped me.
“It’s okay, Sara.”

“No, listen.
Why did you—”

“I wanted
to...I had to.” Then he grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Be happy, okay? That’s all, just be happy.”

I hear he has a girlfriend, a sophomore, Tina Glouster; tiny with wire-rimmed glasses and a mean jump shot.
Tiny Tina. There’s a part of me that’s jealous, that wants to say,
Hey, Tiny Tina, Jerry’s mine. Mine. Even if I don’t want him, he’s still mine.

How selfish is that?

He’s always been there, like a cowlick or a crooked finger, after a while you get used to it, kind of expect it, make adjustments, all the while looking for a way to fix it, flatten it out, make it the way you want it to be. And now he’s gone, another part of my old life wiped out. Even T-Rex is gone, adopted by the Jedinski’s because Aunt Irene said a dog wouldn’t blend well with her house.

I was walking down the hall in school the other day and there was this guy ahead of me, his hair was streaked gold and he had an easy, familiar walk and for a second I thought it was Peter.
And then he turned around. Some days I wonder if I will carry the pain of Peter Donnelly with me forever.

Nina has written to me six times and called once.
Her life is the same but better. Dominic Louis Tegretti was born November 17
th
with severe respiratory problems which kept him on life support for nine days. Little Dom is home now, gulping in a new chance for life. Apparently, so is Mr. Tegretti, who upon seeing his infant son on a ventilator fell to his knees, begging God and his wife to forgive him his
many
trespasses.

Maria is coming home to join the Tegretti’s and their thirty-two close relatives for the annual Christmas Eve dinner of linguine and calamari.
It seems when Maria heard about little Dom’s near miss, she ran to her neighbor’s and phoned home, confessing more in twenty seconds than she had in ten years. She isn’t working at the Philadelphia Enquirer as a reporter; she’s a cashier at the Dunkin’ Donuts
next
to the Enquirer. And, she doesn’t have tons of boyfriends; she only has one—Danny Morelli, her high school sweetheart, who is studying pre-med at Temple. Most upsetting to Nina is that Maria will always be a die-hard rock n’ roller, so no, she can’t have her albums. Nina said her mother cried and her father almost swore when they heard the truth, especially the part about Danny Morelli, but then they told Maria they didn’t want to lose her again, and Nina’s father invited Danny to Christmas Eve dinner.

Nina says Conchetta is wearing Henry Wallenski’s class ring on her third finger and he’s been invited to the Andolotti home for Sunday dinner twice.
Way to go, Conchetta! When Nina tells me this, she also slips in one small detail—she’s going to the Snowball with Jay Galeston—her
boyfriend
.

And that, as Nina says, is the end, or the beginning, of that.

Ms. O’Grady drives the twelve miles to Aunt Irene’s every Sunday afternoon in her Caprice. We talk, go for rides and stop for coffee at The Blue Kettle, where she smokes her Salems, inhaling and holding so long I think she’ll swallow the smoke, but then she closes her eyes and blows out a long, thin line, her chin tilted just so.

Ms. O’Grady is right about Aunt Irene needing Kay and me, and Kay needing Aunt Irene
. But does Ms. O’Grady realize
I need her?
And has she figured out that she needs me, too?

Yesterday was Sunday.
She came, even though Christmas is only three days away and she’ll be back in two days to go to Midnight Mass with us.

“I have something for you,” I say, watching her pull off her coat. It is dark brown, shapeless and old, hard to tell if it is hers or maybe at one time, had belonged to Mr. O’Grady.
Aunt Irene has a new one waiting for her under the tree, royal blue with a black fur collar.