Pretending Normal (2 page)

And then I see him.
Frank rolls out of his green pickup, hanging onto the door for support. I stiffen, Nina sips air beside me. He lifts his head in our direction, squints, and belts out, “Saaaara! Niiiiina Teggggretti!”

“Mr. Polokovich.” Nina’s voice is thinner than a communion wafer.
“Nice to see you.”

Right.
Nice to see you drunk, old man
. I just nod and keep my mouth shut.

“Well, I’ve got to get home.
Bye Sara.” Nina is staring at the sidewalk. “Bye, Mr. Polokovich.”

Frank
falls back against the truck. “Good-bye, Nina Bellina, Spaghettina, Angelina, Rosarina—”

“Bye,” I say, turning away.
“Let’s go inside.” I take Frank’s arm and guide him toward the back porch.

“Hey, it rhymed.”
He lets out a laugh and a belch at the same time. “I’m a goddamn poet.”

“Why don’t you lie down for a while?”

“Why?” He cocks his head to the left, gets right in my face, so close I almost keel over from the fumes. “You think I’m half-lit, don’t you?”

“No,” I lie
. “You just look tired.”

He belches again
and smacks his lips. “I think I will take a nap before dinner.” He laughs, stumbles over the step into the kitchen. “I had a quick one,” he says, raising a finger the size of a small stump in the air. It wobbles back and forth. “Just one.”

“I know
.” And then another and another.

He moves past me,
the brown bag tucked against his chest. “Call me for dinner.” He makes it up the stairs, banging against the hallway like a pinball.

The phone rings and I snatch it off the hook.
Frank doesn’t like phones. “Hello?”

“Sara?
Hey, this is Jerry. Do you and Kay want to go to the beach tomorrow?”

Jerry Jedinski, my next-door neighbor
—one year older, six foot three, black-rimmed glasses, acne dotting the sides of his face like Orion’s Belt.
In love with me since the fourth grade
. “Hi Jerry. I don’t know right now, I’ll have to call you back.”

Long pause.
I can picture him standing there, his brown hair sticking straight up, even after numerous attempts to plaster it down with Brill Creme and his mother’s Final Net. How can somebody with a 4.0 GPA not get it? I’m. Not. Interested. In. Him.

“Okay, Jerry?”

“Uh, okay. Sure. Call me back.”

“Bye,” I say and hang up.
Jerry’s a plodder—he keeps calling even though I’ve told him ten thousand times we’re just friends. He says fine, he’s okay with that, but I see the way he looks at me sometimes, when he thinks I’m not watching, kind of like a stray puppy searching for a home. Well, he’s not going to find one with me.

It is
mid-June and Helen Polokovich’s roses cluster in cascades of red, yellow, and pink. Six bushes in full bloom, bunched together against an old picket fence, masking chipped, white paint. Even in darkness, I feel their beauty. I inhale the sweetness, extend my hands until my fingers brush the velvet of a petal.

“You should
have left him,” I murmur, stroking the petal. “We could be with Aunt Irene now, instead of here.” I sink to the ground, the earth’s dampness a welcome relief from the parched night. “I hate him. You know that, don’t you?”

Then,
I close my eyes and remember.

Did you ever
think about getting a divorce?

My
mother is shoveling peat moss around her roses, bare hands streaked black-brown. Working hands, that’s what she calls them. The thin gold band is all she wears on her left hand, nothing else, not even nail polish.

It’s not that easy, Sara.
You don’t just get a divorce.

Some people do.
Elizabeth Taylor does.

She’s a
movie star. She doesn’t count.

Well, Mrs.
Meyers got a divorce last year.

She’s not
Catholic. She’s Lutheran.

What about
Mrs. Paletto? She’s Catholic.

Mrs. Paletto’s husband beat her.
She had to leave him or be killed.

H
e’s drinking. You know it. Just like you knew he was drinking that day in the garage when you came in on him.

I know.

He hid the bottle in the garbage.

I know.
I went back and checked later.

Then why didn’t you
tell him you found it, just say, ‘I found your Cutty Sark, you’re not fooling me.’

He knows.

And?

He knows I know. That’s enough for now.

So,
you still love him. That’s why you stay, isn’t it?

She
brushes her hands together, lets the dirt scatter around her, inspects each nail packed with black dirt. Finally, she says, The reasons people get married and the reasons they stay married aren’t always the same, most of the time they’re not the same. Sometimes love just dies on its own, or gets killed. And then people stay together for the children, the convenience, the comfort. Even a bad marriage is sometimes better than starting over, especially at forty-seven.

Forty-seven isn’t that old.

She smiles, a sad, wistful smile and turns away.
It’s too old to change. I have you and Kay. It’s enough.

Kay and I could help you, Mom.
We could move, get jobs after school—

It would never be that simple.

But why?

No one takes wh
at belongs to Frank Polokovich.

He
—

No, Sara.

Why did you come back to Norwood? Why didn’t you stay in Buffalo?

Your Grandmother got sick and I came home to take care of her.
I was only planning to stay a few weeks until her insulin was under control and she could give herself her own shots.

S
o, she talked you into staying?

No.
I met your father.

***

“Kay? Are you ready yet?” I yell from the bottom of the stairs. Jerry says if we don’t leave by eleven thirty there’ll be wall-to-wall beach towels and nowhere for us. “Come on, Kay. Let’s go!” I want to be out of here before Frank gets back from wherever he is.

The low
, muffled groan frightens me. Kay? I fly up the stairs to our bedroom, honing in on the sound. Kay is lying on her left side, curled into a ball with the orange and brown afghan Aunt Irene made last year pulled to her chin. Her eyes are squeezed shut and her face looks like someone has erased the color from it, her lips, too.

“What’s wrong?”

“Cramps,” she whispers. “Bad.”

“Do you need the water bottle?”

“Got it already.”

“Did you take any aspirin?”

“Hmm hmm.”
It slips out more whimper than word.

“Okay.
Good.”
Now what?

“Can’t go.”

“What?”

“The beach.
Can’t go.” Her breath falls out, light and shaky. “Sorry.”

“Oh.
Right.”
Damn
. “It’s okay.” I stare at the white line around her lips. “It’s too hot anyway.”

She makes a noise, a faint trickle of sound that works itself into a word.
“Liar.” Then, “Pads?”

Oh.
“You need a pad?”

“All gone.
Need some.”

Oh.
Now what? Aunt Irene’s been buying them for us these last two months. What am I supposed to do, walk into the A&P and pick out a box? What if I see someone I know? What if it’s someone in my grade?
What if it’s a guy?

“Sorry.”

Shit
. “It’s okay.” I force a smile. “I’ll get you some.”

“Thanks.”
She moves her head once and her eyes drift shut again.

I run downstairs and call Jerry, tell him Kay is sick with the flu, just one more lie, and then I hang up, stuff ten bucks in my pocket and head out the door.

I do not want to do this
, I say to myself, every step of the way to the A&P. I land on as many cracks in the sidewalk as I can, how much worse can my luck get? Bad enough that Kay is lying upstairs, curled up with cramps, bad enough that girls have to bleed themselves half-anemic every month. But worst of all, bad enough that I have to walk into the A&P and buy something that is going to shout to the whole world that yes, indeed, the Polokovich girls have periods!

The red letters of the A&P stick out against the white aluminum like zits on a clear face.
The closer I get, the faster I suck in air until I am hyperventilating.
Dear God, don’t let me see anyone I know
. Ridiculous, since everybody knows everybody in Norwood. So, I revise.
Dear God, don’t let me see any boys I know, not even the seven- year old ones I baby-sit, like Tommy and Timmy Callion. And not the old white-haired ones, either, like Mr. Jackson or Mr. Pandionetti. No bald ones either. No fathers of my friends, no uncles, cousins. Nobody.

I rub my hands on my
jean shorts and yank open the glass door. And there’s last year’s World History teacher, Mr. Carlson. He’s pushing a grocery cart stuffed with brown bags. Two boxes of Pampers teeter on top.

“Hello, Sara.
How are you doing?” He has a deep, gentle voice, thinning hair, and horn-rimmed glasses.

“Fine
.” I force the word out almost before he finishes the question. “How are the twins?”

His smile stretches over the angles of his thin face, making him almost attractive.
“Marie and Antoinette are doing well, thank you.”

I nod, wondering what Mrs. Carlson thinks about naming her children after a woman who had her head chopped off.

“And you, Sara?” His expression turns serious, like it does when he’s explaining the true meaning of the Ides of March. “How are you?”

“Fine.”
This comes out a little too quickly. “Fine,” I try again, more relaxed this time. Why do I always say that? How are you? Fine. How is your life? Fine? Would you like cow tongue for lunch? Fine.

He tips his chin down, holds my gaze.
“How is your father doing?”

Such an innocent question.
Does he mean because of my mother, or has he seen Frank stumbling around Main Street? “Fine,” I say.

He nods and this time it is his turn to look away.
“It’s good to see you again.”

I dig my hands in my jeans pockets
and step aside so he can get by. “You, too.” I watch him push the cart topped with Pampers through the electronic exit door and wonder if there are any Kotex tucked away in his bags.

This jerks me back to my problem.
I snake around toward aisle number two, to the four packs of double-ply Charmin, boxes of Kleenex, rolls of Bounty
and
feminine napkins. Kotex and Modess, one box green and blue, the other pink and white. The Kotex box is smaller so I grab it. 

I inch my way to the registers, peek at the customers in line.
They are busy unloading their carts—packages of hamburger meat, ten pound bags of white potatoes, red and gold pouches of Eight o’clock Coffee, cans of pork and beans, napkins. Family things. I lower the box of Kotex to my right hip, hide part of it with my arm, and hurry to the closest checkout.

The O’Grady sisters are in front of me, Patricia and Evelyn, Hunt and Peck we call them.
Patricia ‘Hunt’ O’Grady taught Typing I and Shorthand at Norwood High School until she retired two years ago. Her sister, Evelyn ‘Peck’ O’Grady, was the Typing II and Typing III teacher until last year and now she gives driving instructions to high school kids. Three dollars a session if they use their own car, three-fifty if they drive her green Caprice Classic. Both sisters live with their widowed father, Samuel, on Oak Street, have lived there for much of their fifty-some years.

They are taller than most women, with long, rangy limbs, pointed noses and cropped hair.
Rumor has it that several years ago, ‘Peck’ painted her lips deep red, twisted her then long brown hair in an up-do and ran away to Buffalo with a Fuller-Brush salesman. Old man O’Grady went after her, determined to drag her back to Norwood. But ‘Peck’ puffed on her Salems, lifted her pointy nose in the air and refused to leave. Until Mr. Fuller-Brush confessed to a wife and three kids. That did her in. Story goes she wiped off the ‘Blood Red Berry’ from her lips, chopped her hair and followed her old man home, a big piece of herself left behind in the trash beside the whacked locks.

No matter if I scrunch up my eyes or squeeze them shut, I can’t picture Ms. Evelyn O’Grady prancing around with a cigarette dangling from red lips, telling her father she is staying in Buffalo with a man.
But I’ve heard the tale enough times to know there must be some truth to it, though sometimes the teller has her pregnant or delivering a child and giving it up for adoption. I look at her now, her salt and pepper head shorn closer than a sheep’s back, face scrubbed clean, no makeup, nothing, not even chapstick.