The New Normal (9 page)

nine

Friday came too fast. Mom said
goodbye
and
have fun
and
be good
, and she hugged and kissed us. Then she got into a taxi and left me alone with a crippled dad I barely recognized and certainly couldn't talk to. I still couldn't believe that she would leave us.

Dad and I stood on the front step in the frosty morning air and watched the cab roll away until we couldn't see its taillights anymore. Then we turned to each other, and I wondered if I looked as sad as he did. I gave him a hug.

We went inside and Dad hit a pile of his beer-can pieces with his crutch, and they flew across the living room. Squares and circles and ovals and rectangles and long thin strips of metal lay scattered across the carpet. Then he stretched out on the couch and closed his eyes as if he was in terrible pain. For a minute I watched him lie there, drowning in the quicksand of his own grief. Then I carefully stepped around the pieces and went into the kitchen. I scrambled three eggs and made four slices of toast. I divided everything between two plates and gave one to my dad. We ate on the couch together in silence.

I had decided to start eating breakfast.

As I walked to school through the gray, icy morning, it occurred to me that Mom might never come back. She might have just left us for good.

But no, she wouldn't do that.

She couldn't do that.

Could she?

I kept walking, trying not to slip on patches of black ice.

I was on my way to my first class, carrying my textbooks and binder, when—BANG!—somebody slammed into me, and I dropped everything and fell on the floor. My binder rings snapped open, and a hundred pages of notes fluttered through the hall. People trampled all over them, not caring. I rubbed my shoulder where I'd been smacked. I didn't see who had pushed me. No one said sorry. Nobody helped me up. It was going to be a long day.

The only good part of the day was rehearsal, where I got to pretend to be someone else for a few hours. And Friday was my favorite rehearsal day because we always stayed longer—it always felt like we got more done. The theater was so different than the rest of the school. The stage was black with black curtains, and the seats and floor were black too, so it felt like you were entering a secret cave. There were no windows. Somehow it made me feel safe.

Ms. Jane had us begin with some trust exercises.

“Light as a feather, stiff as a board.” She clapped her hands. “In character! Auntie Em, you're up.”

“I'm okay.”

“Come on, let's go.”

“No, really, I…”

“We won't drop you,” said Cole. “Not on purpose anyway.”

Everyone laughed. Even me. I lay down on the stage and crossed my arms over my chest. Tin Man and Lion kneeled on my left side, Scarecrow and the Wicked Witch of the West on my right. They each slipped two fingers of each hand beneath me and began to chant, “Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Light as a feather, stiff as a board.” I trembled and closed my eyes. “Light as a feather, stiff as a board.” I felt myself rise off the stage, but I couldn't feel their fingers anymore. My body felt suspended in the thickness of the air. I was floating. I was weightless. “Light as a feather, stiff as a board! LIGHT AS A FEATHER, STIFF AS A BOARD!” My eyes popped open. I was high above the stage, above their heads. I panicked and began to flail. The black stage rushed up to meet me. Before I crashed into it Scott caught me and set me gently on my feet.

“You all right, Auntie Em?” he said.

“Yes, yes, I believe I am.” I brushed myself off and ran my hands over my wig to make sure it was still in place. My heart was racing.

“Good thing I was just oiled this morning, or I would never have been able to catch you.” He smiled.

Beth Dewitt rolled her eyes and lay down between us to be lifted. “I'll show you losers how it's done,” she hissed.

I don't know why they cast Yeti as the wicked witch; Beth would have been perfect for it.

When I got home, I found Dad on the couch in the exact same position he had been in when I left. Leg propped on three pillows, beer-can parts still strewn across the room. I wondered if he had moved at all during the day.

“What's up, Dad?”

“The ceiling.”

“Good one.”

He grunted.

“Need anything?”

“Yeah, a new roof.”

“Oh yeah, the hailstorm.”

“I didn't get the insurance that covers hail damage.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” He looked down at his stained jogging pants.

“Shit.”

“I thought if anything happened, I could just fix it myself. Save us the money.”

“So…now what are you going to do?”

He slowly shook his head back and forth and continued to stare at the ceiling. I looked up. A hairline fissure unfurled above us like a baby vine, but I could swear it had always been there.

“I don't know,” he said. “Beg, borrow or steal it. Hope it doesn't rain anytime soon.”

“Well”—I patted him on the shoulder, trying to sound cheerful—“I think it'll be okay, Dad. The forecast calls for clear skies. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help.”

“Can you bring me the phone and the phone book?”

“Sure.” I walked into the kitchen.

“And another beer?”

After carefully inspecting the upstairs ceiling for cracks and leaks and finding neither, I went into my room, put on the radio and combed out my wig with the special wig comb. I took it off and felt my head for any new growth. Then I examined my legs and arms under a magnifying glass. Not a whisper of hair to be found anywhere. Smooth as a baby's ass.

I heard Abby's voice in my head.
“Hey, look on the bright side. At least you don't have to shave your legs anymore.”

I don't know what happens when you die. But once in awhile I get this strange feeling that my sisters are watching me from somewhere else, like another planet or something. And sometimes I hear them speak inside my head, clear as a bell. It's weird, I know. It's crazy.

After their accident I went to see a grief therapist, aka a shrink, a few times. I still had all my hair then. The grief
therapist had short gray hair and looked like an elf. Her name was Nina. I couldn't stand Nina and her nasally questions and her surreptitious note-taking and her stinky vanilla perfume. Talking to her made me even more depressed about the whole double death situation, so I quit after three sessions.

She did get one thing right though: she said that life is a series of painful, tragic, unbearable events, and the best we can do is fumble through it with our chins up.

Nina wanted to load me up on antidepressants so I could be another placid zombie success story. I told her exactly where she could shove her antidepressants.

I rubbed some cream that I had bought at the drugstore into my head. It claimed to renew hair growth and had a man with an afro on the bottle. It smelled horrible and made my eyes
sting. I sat down on my bed. There was a
DVD
on my pillow. I picked it up. On the cover was a beautiful blond woman in a hot-pink leotard. She was standing on one leg and had the other one wrapped around her ear. She was smiling as if she had just won a million bucks. The title said
Yoga for Happiness
. I flipped the case over. On the back was a yellow Post-it note.

Tamar, I hope you will try this video. It could be just the thing you need. Please look after yourself. See you soon. Love you forever.

Mom

I looked at the woman on the cover again. I laughed. There was no way. There was just no way. I shoved the
DVD
into the back of my closet and decided to forget about it.

Just who did my mother think she was? Flaking off like this, abandoning us in our time of need? And for what? So she could sit under a gigantic tree in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and pick her nose with her toes? It was obscene.

I put on a toque and went downstairs. I ate a spoonful of peanut butter and then heated up a can of tomato soup and made two grilled-cheese sandwiches. I poured the soup into two bowls and put them and the sandwiches onto plates, with pickles on the side. I went to the living room, careful not to step on any of the scrap metal, and handed a plate to my dad. He looked right through me. He was watching a rerun of
Star Trek: The Next Generation.

“Thanks.” He started eating without even looking at his food.

I sat down at the end of the couch. “What's going on?”

“Did you know that Vulcans are incapable of experiencing emotion?”

“Yeah, they're the sociopaths of the universe.”

“Wouldn't that be nice? To have all logic and no emotion?”

“I don't know.”

“I think it would be great.” He crunched down on his pickle, then took a swig of beer.

“Did you call the roofers?”

“Yeah, they'll be here Monday. ”

“That's good.”

“They'll let me pay it off in installments.”

“Great.”

“Yeah.” He sighed and turned back to Captain Jean-Luc Picard, who I have to admit, was a man who wore his baldness well.

I had homework I should have been doing, but I decided to let my mind take a backseat and let the crew of the starship
Enterprise
drive.

I went to bed when
Letterman
came on, leaving my dad snoring on the couch, bathed in flickering blue light.

I dreamed that I was the captain of the
Enterprise
and we visited an alien planet that was bright purple with massive fluorescent-pink palm trees and a black ocean. All the aliens on the planet looked like Abby and Alia, but none of them had any hair. They were a violent, bald race. They tried to kill me and my crew with their mind-warping powers. They made our brains bleed. They reached through our rib cages into our chests and squished our hearts. We zapped them with our phasers and fled to the safety of our ship.

ten

On Monday in gym class, we were separated from the boys while they started their wrestling unit. The girls in our class were put with the grade-twelve girls to play basketball. Beth Dewitt, aka Demonic Dorothy, was on my team. She was a pretty decent player. Even though she was the shortest one in the gym, she was fast. But she kept fouling, and she didn't pass the ball to me once, even when I was wide open and standing under the net flapping my arms, yelling her name.

Afterward in the girls' change room, I overheard Lana Thompson telling Jess Kazinski that Beth was going to have to bind her breasts for the play because they were too big to fit into her Dorothy costume.

“Is that true?” I asked.

And then Beth was there. She stood in front of me with her hands on her hips while I tried to change covertly behind a locker door.

“Is what true?”

Jess and Lana said nothing. They closed their lockers and went to the mirror to redo their makeup.

“Tamar,” Beth said loudly, “I asked you a question. What were you talking about? I heard my name.”

“It's nothing,” I stammered. “Never mind.”

“Tell me!”

“Um…”

All the girls in the change room turned to look at us.

“You never do what you're told, do you?”

“I don't know…”

“Are you spreading rumors about me, Tamar?”

I looked at Jess and Lana for help. They were suddenly fascinated with their mascara.

“Because rumors can really hurt people.” Beth looked at her friend Madison, who had come up behind me. Madison probably had fifty pounds on me. She had red hair and four fat brothers and was tough as a rusty nail. Madison sneered at me and smacked her fist into her palm.

“I…I don't…”

“Just apologize before we have to hurt you,” Madison said.

“On your knees,” Beth said.

I looked around the room. No one was going to help me; no one even cared.

“And I'll tell you another thing, Tamar. The only reason Ms. Jane gave you a part in the play is because she feels sorry for you because your slutty little sisters went and got themselves killed.”

“Beth,” someone near the showers said.

“Shut up. I'm talking now. You'd better get down on your knees and apologize to me right now or I swear to God I will make your life a living hell.”

“Too late for that,” I mumbled.

“What?”

“I don't want to,” I said in a small voice.

“Look, Tamar. I'm doing you a favor. You need to learn a few things before you get to grade twelve. Like who gets respect and who has to bow down. You, and all the people like you, bow down.” She laughed a horrible, high-pitched laugh, and some other girls laughed too. Then she leaned over and hissed, “You'll never be good enough for Roy, so don't even try.”

I felt the blood burning my face scarlet, but I didn't care. My hands balled themselves into fists and trembled at my sides. I took a deep breath, held it in and started counting to ten.

“I'm waiting for my apology.” She crossed her arms over her massive chest and twisted up her lips. She tapped her foot twice.

And then something inside me exploded.

I didn't even think about doing it. Something took over my body and made it move. I punched Beth Dewitt right square in her little button nose. It immediately began to ooze blood. She yelped and covered her face with her hands. Some of the girls in the change room started chanting “Fight, fight, fight” and formed a circle around us. Everything was happening in slow motion. Beth slapped me across the face, and I smacked her right back. “You ugly little bitch,” she said. Then it was on. The girls chanted louder. “FIGHT,
FIGHT, FIGHT!” I elbowed Beth in the breasts and she hit me in the ribs. I kneed her in the stomach and she kicked me in the shins and punched me in the mouth. I dragged my fingernails across her face. She screamed and grabbed my throat. I sacked her in the jaw and then she grabbed a chunk of my hair. “Okay, okay, I'm sorry! I apologize!” I said, clawing at her wrist. But it was too late. She ripped my wig off and there I was, exposed, bald as a bowling ball, in front of everyone. The girls stopped chanting. Everyone was silent. You could have heard a tampon drop.

Then Beth laughed. Her laughter echoed off the tile floor and walls and still echoes now in my mind. “She's a freak!” she said, holding up my wig like a trophy. “She's a fucking
freak
!” Then the other girls started saying “Oh my god” and “Holy shit” or just gaping openly, for a couple of minutes or a thousand years, while I stood there with the metallic taste of blood filling my mouth, looking at the floor, letting it all happen.

Eventually the bell rang, and everyone packed up their bags and left as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Everyone but Beth, who still stood in front of me, staring. I closed my eyes and held out my hand. She let her breath out through her teeth and dropped the wig into my open palm. I heard her runners squeak as she turned away and pushed through the change-room door, laughing to herself.
I opened my eyes a crack to be sure I was alone, and then I
sank to the floor and wept. I cried so hard I threw up. I turned off the lights and curled up on one of the hard wooden benches. I stayed there all period and didn't even think about going to English class. At the beginning of the next period, my name was called over the
PA
with instructions to report to the principal's office. I splashed my face with water and dabbed at my bloody lip with a paper towel. I put my wig back on and looked in the mirror. I looked like shit. I pulled my sunglasses out of my purse and put them on, then walked slowly to the office.

Beth had told the principal that I lost it on her after gym class for no good reason. She had brought in witnesses to confirm that I had hit her first and that she only acted in self-defense.

“Is it true what Beth has told me, Tamar?” Mr. Ivers asked.

I stared at the flecks of blue and brown in the carpet as I sat slumped over in a chair beside Beth.

“Tamar?”

“Yeah,” I muttered.

“You know that there is zero tolerance for violence at this school?”

“Yeah.”

Mr. Ivers sighed. “Well, I'm sorry to have to do this, but school policy dictates that you must be suspended for no less than one week.”

“Fine.”

“That means you're not permitted on school property for any reason for seven days.”

“What about for play rehearsal, after school hours?”

“Not for any reason.”

I looked sideways at Beth. She sat up straight, looking smug, with her legs crossed and her humongous boobs jutting out the top of her sweater. I hated her.

“Fine.”

“I hope you understand that this will go down on your permanent record.”

I didn't say anything. I stared at the carpet and decided it was ugly.

“Now, I think you owe Beth an apology.”

I couldn't believe it.

He cleared his throat and tapped a pen against his desk.

I turned to her. “Sorry,” I said through clenched teeth.

She looked away.

“You're to gather your things now and leave school property. Your teachers will be informed of the reason for your absence, and any assignments or tests you miss this week must be made up when you return. I'll be phoning home and letting
your parents know about the situation. You're both dismissed.”

As I walked down the hall to my locker, I heard people whispering and saw them nodding toward me and staring and talking behind their hands.

They already knew.

Everyone already knew.

I might as well get on the
PA
and make an announcement: “Hello, Canyon Meadows High. This is Tamar Robinson speaking. Yes, the sister of the evil twins, now deceased. If you haven't already heard, I am actually completely bald. Not just on my head, but on my entire body. Yes, even down there. And I will probably be hairless for the rest of my life. Thank you for ostracizing me, and have a nice day.”

I trudged home in a daze. The sun was way too bright, glittering off all the snow and burning into my retinas. The sky was a brilliant, piercing blue. A blue so pure and perfect it hurt to look at it.

I was sore all over. My whole body felt like it had been slapped, and I could feel my lips growing puffy and fat. I had an urge to stick my head in the snowbank, but I didn't.

I sighed as I stepped into the warmth of my house. It was quiet, without the
TV
blaring.

“Dad!”

No answer.

I peeked into the kitchen. He wasn't there. I realized this was the first time I had been alone in my house in a very long time.
I closed my eyes and listened to the hum of the fridge. The sound reminded me of my mom doing her yoga chanting. I had a deep and sudden ache inside my chest. I leaned against the wall dividing the kitchen from the living room. Then my dad came through the garage door on his crutches. He reeked of cigarettes.

“Dad!”

“Hi, T. What happened there?” He pointed to my lip.

“I'm not ready to talk about that.”

“Roger that.”

I waited to see if he would say anything about Mr. Ivers calling. He didn't. I checked the answering machine. No messages.
I went upstairs, changed my clothes and took off my wig. I put it on its stand, then shoved it to the back of my closet. What was the point of wearing it now that everyone knew I was bald? It would be posing. And I hated posers.

I went to the mirror and examined my face. My lip looked like a baseball glove and had flakes of dried blood on it. I felt
around inside my mouth with my fingers. No teeth loose or missing—that was lucky. It could have been worse, I thought.
“No, it couldn't have,”
I heard Alia say in my head. I was glad my mom was gone, because I would have been too ashamed to tell her what had happened in the locker room that day.

I washed my face and brushed my teeth and put on my blue flannel pajamas. I pulled down my blinds, got into bed and closed my eyes. When I closed my eyes, I saw the girls' faces in the change room at the moment my wig had been ripped off.
At first, their soft pink mouths had formed little
O
s of shock and surprise, and then they had contorted into such ugly shapes of vicious, scathing laughter that it was hard to believe any one of those girls had a kind heart. I tried to squeeze the whole savage scene out of my head, but it was there to stay, maybe forever.

I stayed in bed for the rest of the afternoon and all night. It had been the single-most humiliating day of my entire life, and I didn't want to come out until it was over.