Define "Normal" (11 page)
The dread overwhelmed me. I really, really did not want to talk about this.
“Jazz, I really don’t want to talk about it,” I told her right off.
“Come on.” She scooted her chair closer. “At least tell me what they’re like.”
“Who?”
“Duh,” she said. “Your foster parents.”
Foster parents. I sighed. “They’re ugly, evil little gnomes who keep us locked in the root cellar with the rats. Vicious rats. Rabid rats.”
One side of Jazz’s lips cricked up. “Do they make you eat gruel?”
“Gallons of it.” I added, “And what’s worse, their dog sleeps under the table during meals and farts.”
Jazz burst into laughter. After she recovered, she said, “Come on. Tell me the truth.”
Leave me alone, I thought. Just let me be.
“Tone.” Folding her arms, she said, “You never share anything. You’re so selfish sometimes.”
Selfish? That did it. I spun on her. “They’re young, rich, glamorous yuppies with a four-car garage and a built-in swimming pool. Their problem is they have this self-centered, thankless daughter who doesn’t give a damn about anything or anyone.”
Jazz’s face went white. Her eyes said murder, so I stood to go. “By the way, tell your mother thank you for all the new clothes. Tell her I don’t plan to cut up a thing.”
Jazz beat me to the door. “I give a damn,” she said.
“Let me out,” I croaked. My face felt fireball red.
“You’re not supposed to run, remember?”
I wrenched open the door.
She blocked my exit with her arm. “Don’t you want to know what I give a damn about?”
I just looked at her. “Not really, Jazz. You know why? Because I don’t give a damn. Not about you. Not about anything or anyone.” I broke through her arm block and fled down the hall.
She hollered after me, “I give a damn about you!”
K
aren was sitting at the Abeytas’ kitchen table with Tillie and Chuckie when we got home from school. “Hello, kids.” Tillie got up and rushed over to greet us. She hugged Michael. “How was your day?”
“Good,” he said. “I had the best lunch of anybody.”
Tillie beamed. Then she hugged me. “How was your day?”
Awful, I didn’t say. I didn’t hug back either. Guess I didn’t feel very huggable.
Luis kissed Tillie on the cheek and sat down next to Chuckie. My little brother was busy gathering together his
Star Wars
action figures that the Luthers had given him. When I walked by and tousled his hair, he barely acknowledged me.
“You must be starved,” Tillie said. “Sit down and have a snack.”
There was a plate of chocolate chip cookies on the table. They smelled freshly baked, sweet and chocolatey. While Tillie poured each of us a glass of milk, Karen said, “Your mother’s feeling a little better today. She’d like to see you.”
“Yeah?” My heart leapt. “When?”
“Any time.”
“Let’s go.” I jumped to my feet. “Come on, Michael.”
His eyes stayed on the cookies. “I’m hungry,” he said. “You go.”
I just stared at him.
Karen got up and motioned me toward the door. “We’ll bring you a report, Michael. How’s that?”
“Good,” he garbled, stuffing his face.
Tillie said, “Here, Antonia. Take some cookies with you.”
That’s a good idea, I thought. “Could I take some to Mom?”
Tillie said, “Well, sure.” She stacked a dozen or so in a paper lunch sack and handed it to me. “Tell her to enjoy them.”
She will, I didn’t say. I should have said it, just like I should have said thank you.
As we backed down the driveway, I muttered more to myself than Karen, “I can’t believe Michael.”
“I can,” Karen said. “He’s confused and scared. He probably remembers how your mom was the last time he saw her.”
“That’s no excuse,” I said. “He’s a traitor. One lousy cookie and he sells out his own mother.”
“Oh, come on. He’s not strong as you, Antonia.” Karen looked at me. “Not many people are.”
I turned away. I didn’t feel strong. I felt weak and helpless.
The hospital elevator smelled like chicken soup. Probably from the food cart that clattered away in front of us. The aroma made my mouth water. I clutched the paper sack stuffed with cookies tighter in my fist, fighting the hunger. Mom would want these cookies. She loved chocolate chip cookies. She used to make us chocolate chip cookies.
The elevator filled with people, and the doors closed. Karen pressed the button for the sixth floor. The panel above it read 6
TH FLOOR, PSYCHIATRIC.
I shrank back, hoping no one noticed that Karen and I were together.
Thankfully, we were the only ones left on the elevator by the time it reached the top floor. The elevator doors opened to a glassed-in nurses’ station. Now all I smelled was that sick hospital odor.
On each side of the station, signs over locked steel doors said
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
Which we weren’t.
Karen approached the window. A nurse glanced up and smiled. “May I help you?” She spoke through a circle in the glass.
“We’d like to visit Patrice Dillon.”
“Are you family?” she asked.
“This is her daughter. I’m the children’s social worker.”
I tried to look invisible.
The nurse slid open a panel under the hole. “Sign in, please.”
After Karen signed our names, the nurse got up and unlocked the door. Inside the ward, it felt eerie. The nurse asked us to follow her. At the first room someone peered out through a small reinforced-glass window. The door rattled and the woman yelled a muffled curse. A man sobbed audibly in the next room. My first thought was, Thank God Michael didn’t come. He’d be so freaked.
“Wait here in the community room,” the nurse told us. “I’ll bring Mrs. Dillon down.”
There were several other people in the room. All patients, I assumed. One of them, a man with greasy hair, leered at me. It made me move closer to Karen. An old lady smiled. Rotten teeth.
I trailed Karen to the far corner where an empty easy chair adjoined a loveseat. We both sat on the loveseat. Karen patted my knee. “You okay?”
I clutched the cookies. “Fine.”
“It’s not what you expected, is it?”
I shrugged. What did I expect?
She said, “I think it’s rather homey.”
What home did
you
escape from? I almost said.
The nurse reappeared. “Here we are.”
Karen and I stood. Mom sat slumped in a wheelchair, her hair all ratty. She wore a green hospital gown and her flowered slippers. How’d she get her slippers? I wondered. “Mom?” I crouched down in front of her.
Her head rose slightly and she smiled. “Antonia? My sweet baby girl?” Her voice sounded hollow.
Tears choked me. “So”—I swallowed them down—”how are you feeling?”
I saw the nurse flash ten fingers at Karen. We didn’t have much time. “I brought you a present,” I told Mom. Setting the sack in her lap, I added, “Cookies. Your favorite, chocolate chip.”
“Mmmm.” Mom smiled.
She looked tired. Tired and beaten. The bags under her eyes were puffy and dark. “Antonia,” she said again. “My sweet baby girl.”
I wanted to shake her. I wanted to shake her and shake her until she woke up. Until she was normal again. Until she was Mom again.
I turned to Karen. “We have to go now, right?”
Karen blinked and nodded. “Right,” she said. “Mrs. Dillon, get well soon. Don’t worry about the kids. There are some very nice people looking after them for you.”
Mom smiled again. “Thank you,” she whispered. She looked at me, then down at the cookies. Her hands were trembling. Suddenly she dissolved into tears and crushed the cookies to her face.
The nurse, who’d been standing by, rushed over and wheeled her around. “I’m sorry,” the nurse said. “She’s having a rough day.”
When Mom was gone, I whirled on Karen. “I thought you said she was better. You said she wanted to see us.”
“She did.” Karen reached for me and I lurched back. “I’m sorry, Antonia.”
Everybody’s sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Back at the elevator I stood punching the button. Why didn’t it come? Why? Finally the doors opened. In silence we rode down. And out. I just wanted out.
We didn’t talk at all until we strapped on our seat belts and Karen backed out of the parking space. She said, “The doctor told me she was ready for a family visit.”
“A family visit? She didn’t even ask about Michael and Chuckie. I bet she doesn’t even remember them. She barely remembered me.” All of it, all my anger, all my fear and fatigue, my hurt and humiliation, it all poured out at Karen.
“It’ll take a while for her medication to take effect,” she said calmly.
“Medication!” I nearly screamed. “What kind of medication? She’s doped up like a zombie. She isn’t any better. If anything, she’s worse.”
“It sometimes takes up to six weeks before you see any improvement.” She turned to me. “She will improve, Antonia. I promise.”
“Yeah, right.” What did a promise from her mean? “They’re frying her brain with drugs,” I mumbled.
Karen sighed. “That’s how it seems at first,” she said. “But the doctors will find the best drug for her and the right dose. It takes time. You wait. In a couple of months, you won’t recognize her.”
“I don’t recognize her now.”
Karen looked away. I inhaled deeply and tried to stop shaking. Tried to quell the eruption inside.
“You want to stop for a burger?” Karen said. “It’ll sabotage my diet, but what the hell. Sometimes you just need a Happy Meal. Or three, or six.” She smiled somberly.
I didn’t think any number of Happy Meals would make me happy. Not ever.
While we ate our burgers and fries, Karen chattered about her day. She said she had to follow the cops to one house where a divorced dad had kidnapped his kids, then she had to pick up another child from day care when the mother got arrested for dealing drugs.
All I could do was shake my head. “I’d hate your job,” I said.
She laughed. “Hey, today was a good day.”
I just rolled my eyes and slurped my shake.
“What do you want to be, Antonia?” Karen swirled a fry in our shared pool of ketchup. “Careerwise.”
“I don’t know.” I jabbed my straw in the shake. “Something where I can help people. I thought I wanted to be a doctor, until today.” My eyes met Karen’s. “What’s wrong with my mom?”
Karen wiped her greasy fingers on a napkin and sighed. “She’s depressed. Clinically depressed. Do you know what that is?”
“Sort of,” I said. I’d been living with it.
“It’s a chemical imbalance in the brain. It’s a disease. In your mom’s case, it’s probably a lifelong disease. Has she always been like this?”
“No,” I answered. “I mean, yes and no. There were times when she was fine. Happy. Other times she … wasn’t.”
Karen said, “I take it she’s been on medication before?”
I nodded. I never really knew what the medication was for. “She hates taking pills, though. She said they never worked.” I picked up my shake and slurped, then added, “She was right.”
Karen replied, “She probably didn’t take them long enough to work.”
My eyes widened a little.
“It’s typical of people like your mom. They don’t feel better right away, or they get to feeling better and think they can make it without their medication, so they stop. And the depression just comes back. Worse every time.”
I finally asked the question I’d been wanting to. “Is she crazy?”
“No. Oh, no.” Karen furrowed her brow. “Not at all. It’s a physical condition. It can be controlled with antidepressant drugs and therapy. Just look at me. Do I seem crazy? Don’t answer that.” She narrowed her eyes.
My eyes about popped out of their sockets. “You’re … ?”
She spread out her hands, palms up. “Clinically depressed.”
“But you act so—so normal.”
“Except for my choice of careers, right?” She smiled.
She said it, I didn’t. “Doesn’t it get to you? Don’t you get even more depressed when you see all this ugly stuff every day?”
She shrugged. “Depends on your perspective. I hope I can help. That’s a positive thing. It’s what keeps me going. Plus, I’m in therapy. But, hey, who isn’t?” She chuckled.
Me, I almost said.
Sobering, she added, “Hang in there, kid.” She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “Someday this’ll all be a bad dream.”
It already is, I thought.
On the way back to the Abeytas’ I asked Karen if I could stop at home and pick up some clothes. Even though Mrs. Luther had bought me a skirt and a couple of tops, I knew I’d run out of things before the end of the week.
“Unfortunately, Antonia, I can’t let you go to your house. One of those dumb rules. But if you tell me what you need, I’ll stop by and pick it up.”
In a way it was a relief not to have to see my house. Not to have to smell the smells, hear the silence, feel the emptiness. “I’ll make a list,” I told Karen. “And you might want to tell our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Marsh, that we’ll be gone for a while.” So she doesn’t call the cops or have our house condemned, I didn’t add.
“We’ve already talked to her,” Karen said. “We’ve been talking. It’s just that we couldn’t do anything before.”
That made me mad. Mrs. Marsh was such a busybody.
Karen must’ve seen the scowl on my face because she said, “Mrs. Marsh was worried about you kids, that’s all. She’s concerned about your mother, too. She took some things over to her in the hospital. And she sent flowers.”
My anger dissolved. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Mom loved flowers.
Karen added, “Mrs. Marsh said she’d look after your house while you were gone. Oh, and she told me something else sort of interesting. She said you do have a father. She didn’t know where he was, but she didn’t think he was dead.”
M
y stomach hurt. At any moment I was going to barf my Big Mac all over Karen’s car. Swallowing down the rising bile, I glanced sideways at her.
She didn’t accuse me of lying. She just said, “We should tell him what’s going on. Do you know where he is?”
“No,” I said.
“Okay.” She turned back to the road. “We’ll try our regular channels.”
