Pretending Normal (5 page)

I stare at my reflection in the
mirror, touch my fingers to my lips. What would it feel like to kiss him? To run my fingers through his hair, hear him say my name? I smile then, the secret smile of a woman-child and laugh as I slip out the door.

“I’m glad you decided to come tonight.” Peter’s white teeth gleam in the faint light of the A&P parking lot. We are one of eight cars, lined up side-by-side, radios blasting out synchronized versions of Aerosmith’s,
Walk This Way
. Peter motions with a flick of his hand when it is time to put the cars in gear, cruise down Main Street to the other side of town, loop into Mini-Mart and head back toward the A&P. This is our third round—idle, rev, go.

“I’m glad I came, too,” I say.
Jerry’s jealousy is ridiculous. Peter Donnelly is sitting beside me with his arm casually slung on the back of my seat, wearing a navy pullover and English Leather after-shave. He’s not someone who hides a flask under the seat of his car. And if I have a chance later tonight, I’ll run my hand under the seat, where Jerry says Peter keeps a flask, and where of course, there will not be one.

“So”
—he turns toward me, his fingers brushing the back of my hair—“what do you do around here for fun?”

“It’s not exactly Pittsburgh, is it?” I ask, avoiding the question.

“Norwood is,” he pauses, “different.
”

“You mean weird?”

He laughs. “I’ve never seen a place where the
policemen
are the ones putting money in the parking meters.”

“That’s
Officer Cranski. He can’t stand to ticket anybody so he carries around a baggie full of change.”

“Like I said
—different.”

“Have you peeked in Bob the Barber’s yet?”

“No, you think I need a haircut?”

“No, your hair’s great.
But the white-haired man with the handlebar mustache, that’s Bob Swanson. He’s also the mayor.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Swear. And the other barber, Ed, he’s a science teacher at the Elementary School and he’s married to Mayor Swanson’s sister, who’s the tax collector.”

“What is this place,
All in the Family
?”

“
More like
Green Acres
.”

“
But you can’t beat the Benny Deluxes,” he says.

“I’d
give anything for a McDonald’s.”

“Y
eah, well, I guess we always want what we can’t have, don’t we?”

He flashes that smile again and I am so lost.
Here is one good thing in my life. I smile too, the first real one in sixty-four days.

“So, is the whole town so
… knowledgeable?”

“You mean
nosy?”

“Y
eah. Nosy.”

“
If you live here long enough, information kind of attaches itself to you, like a tick on a dog. You don’t even realize you know something until people start talking about it and then answers just pop into your head.”

Peter lifts a chunk of my hair, rubs it between his fingers
and lets it fall. “Well, that can be useful. Especially, if you want to find out about someone, say for example I wanted to get the goods on this girl.” There is that smile again. “Maybe I want to know what’s she like, who she hang out with, stuff like that. I could find out everything”—he snaps his fingers—“just like that.”

Not everything.

“Hey. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Since when is it so horrible to be pretty
and
smart?” His hand touches my hair, strokes it. “Do you really read ten books a month?”

“
Who told you?”

“
It’s true?” His eyes are on me like I’ve sprouted antennae.

“Only in the summer.
It’s not that many during school.”

He leans in close.
“How many is ‘not that many’?”

Now he’ll really think I’m a
geek. “Five. But only three are classics, the other two are fun reading.”

“I haven’t read ten books in two years.”
He shakes his head and grins. “Including comic books.”

“It gets pretty boring around here
.”

“According to Mrs.
McGill, your library card has more books charged to it than anyone else in Norwood.”

“She told you that?”

“Actually, she was trying to encourage me to check out a book.
I had my kid brother in the library last week and when she saw me leaving empty handed, she started on the merits of reading, blah, blah, blah, and then your name came up.”

“I’ll bet you were thrilled.”

“Curious, actually. I wondered what kind of girl would spend her whole day reading, and why?”

“I
…” I almost give him the same story about the town being so boring, which it is, but that’s not what pushes me to read so much. I open my mouth and the truth spills out, “It’s the only way I can get out of here. I’ve been writing to colleges since I was thirteen. I’ve got over one hundred and twenty-two packets of information from different schools. And I’m already reviewing for the SAT’s.”

“You hate this place that much?”

“The truth? Yes.”

“I’m sorry about your mother.”

“Thanks.”
But this has nothing to do with her.

We sit there like that a while, Peter stroking my hair,
me staring out the window,
Chicago’s
muted horns filling in the gaps with
Saturday in the Park
. “If you ever want to talk, I’m a good listener.”

“Thanks.”

“Sara—”

“Hey, Peter!
How’s it goin’?” A big, hairy face fills Peter’s window. There’s no mistaking that hawk-like nose, those beady eyes. Rudy Minnoni. His mother, Evangeline, runs Minnoni’s Diner on Main Street. Rumor has it that while her sister, Clementine, flips pancakes and fries up steaks, Evangeline services out-of-towners in the back room, hunters from Ohio and New York mostly. And the only Mr. Minnoni anyone has ever heard of is Evangeline’s father.

“Hey, Rudy.
You know Sara Polokovich, right?”

I press myself into the corner of the car, trying to avoid Rudy’s eyes, which are slicing over my hair, my chest,
my legs.

“I know Sara Polokovich.”

God, I think I’m going to puke.

“But not as well as I’d like to.”

“Lay off, Rudy.”

“Hey, I didn’t mean
nothing by it. I just came to see if you wanted a cold one?”

“No, thanks.”

“Aw, come on.” He pokes his fuzzy head further into the car. “How ‘bout you, Sara? You want a cold one?”

“Jerk.”
Peter revs the engine twice, puts the car in gear and takes off, spewing gravel and dust behind us.

“I guess you really didn’t want a drink,” I say, my gaze fixed on a wild Rudy, waving two cans in the air.

“If you want a drink, I’ll get you one.” His words are clipped, his face tense.

“It’s no big deal.
I’m fine.”

He ignores me and turns into
Mini-Mart. “I’ll be right back.”

Why i
s he so angry? Because of Rudy Minnoni? Jerry’s words fall out of nowhere.
He drives around with a flask under his seat.
I glance toward Mini-Mart and can just make out the top of Peter’s blond head. I lean over and run my hand under his seat. Nothing but a few Bazooka Bubble Gum wrappers and a toothpick. I lean back against the seat, close my eyes, and smile. Jerry is so wrong.

“Hey, sleepyhead, wake up.”

Peter is watching me, his lips curved up at the corners, his voice silky-soft once again.
“If word gets out that you fell asleep on our first date, I’ll be doomed forever.”

“I doubt it,” I say.
Nothing will doom someone with looks and charm like Peter.

“Here.”
He holds out a Pepsi and an open bag of pretzel rods. “When I was a kid I used to pretend these were cigarettes. My kid brother and I would walk around the house puffing on them.” He laughs. “They’d get all soft and gross looking, but we didn’t care.” He reaches in the bag, pulls out two, hands me one. “Try it, I guarantee you’ll get hooked.”

“Thanks.”
I take a bite, chew. So, I’ll bet the twenty dollars stashed under my mattress that this is Jerry’s idea of Peter ‘smoking.’ Not a lie, but not exactly, the truth, either. Not unless you count it a crime to use your imagination.

“Sorry about what happened back there with Rudy.”
Peter takes a swig of Pepsi. “He can be an animal sometimes.”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For getting me out of there.”

“Any time,” he whispers back, closing his fingers over mine. “Any time.”

***

Peter isn’t like any of the guys in Norwood. Even his name is different. It isn’t Pete, or Petey, or Little Pete, or any of the fifty zillion variations a small town gives its own, as though a Christian name is only proper on a birth certificate. The town decides the common name, either through lineage, event, or character trait. Paul Deeley is called Munch because he lost all his teeth to gum disease at eighteen and prefers to keep his dentures in his pocket rather than his mouth. Little Jack Parone, son of Big Jack Parone weighed in at two eighty-five on his twenty-first birthday. Sally Tristel got the nickname Happy Feet fifteen years ago when she danced on the bar of The Time Bomb one Saturday night after a few too many 7&7’s. People get named for things they do, how they look, where they fall in birth order, and it sticks, no matter how many years pass.

But Peter Donnelly has a clean slate.
No past with the people of Norwood, no one to pull out a chair and start telling tales about his grandfather way back when. I wish I could start over, without a history, without Frank. We don’t talk about our families. We meet at Mini-Mart, sometimes at the A&P and he never questions why I don’t want him to come to my house. Maybe he knows, maybe he guesses, or maybe he has his own reasons.

I did hear something about his mother the other day.
Suzanne is her name and she’s from Atlanta. One of the ladies at Church, Mrs. Archinove, whose daughter lives three doors down from the Donnelly’s, said she’s only seen Mrs. Donnelly come outside twice since they moved in two months ago.
She was wearing this long pink chiffon gown the first time
, Mrs. Archinove said,
with high-heeled fancy shoes, you know, the ones with the fur. Pink, they were. And the other time, she had on a satin robe with her hair piled high and diamonds covering her neck and ears. How do you make meat loaf dressed like that?

Peter and I live our lives inside his Chevelle.
Our world exists between four doors, a windshield, and black vinyl seats. There’s a Rolling Stones tongue taped next to the light on the inside roof. When we are in the back seat on Juniper Hill and a car passes, I blink my eyes open and flashes of headlight catch the silver rim of the Stones tongue—thick red lips flicker, then fade. Peter doesn’t notice this. He is on top of me, his hard body pressing against mine, his mouth wet and greedy on my neck. The first time he kisses me we are sitting in his car outside Mini-Mart.

“One
Pepsi for my lady,” he says, holding out a can. I reach for it, but he pulls it away, a lazy smile sliding across his lips. “Is that any way to say thank you?”

“Thank you?”

“Surely”—his smile spreads, he leans forward a little, rests his arm on the back seat of the car—“you can do better than that.”

It is the thrumming beneath his words that tells me what he wants.
I answer with my lips, a soft gentle brush against his. Then I pull away. He reaches out, wraps a hand around my hair and pulls me back. Or do I move on my own? It doesn’t matter, nothing matters but the incredible, urgent need to feel his mouth on mine.

When the kiss ends, he slaps the
can in my hands and jerks the Chevelle into gear and peels out.
Sweet Emotion
blares on the radio. We don’t speak but I know where he’s going. When we crest Juniper Hill, I wonder if we’ll see Mrs. Yallenz and Mr. Moore. People say they sneak up here when Mr. Yallenz goes to bed. I don’t care. All I can think about is Peter. Does this make me a slut? What if he wants to put his tongue in my mouth? What if he wants to touch my breasts? Outside my shirt? Should I let him? Inside? Should I let him? What if he wants to suck on my neck, give me a hickey? What if, what if,
what if?

In the end,
he doesn’t try to put his tongue in my mouth. He saves that for the next time. And he doesn’t try to touch my breasts inside or outside of my shirt. That’s the time after that. And the hickey, well, that’s wedged somewhere in between.