A Cup of Normal (10 page)

At the time I wrote this story, I was a mother of two young children, working during the day, writing at night, and caring for my grandmother who had Alzheimers. I felt a little like Tilly: always called upon to fix one more thing that was falling apart, but also enjoying the joy and quirks of life around me. Tilly’s world is a rich place that I hope to revisit some day.

STITCHERY

Tilly shaded her eyes with her hand
and peered over at the house. The grandma was sitting on the second story window ledge, one bare foot rocking in the wind. Tilly had told her spring was a time of pastels and pinks, of fresh new things, but the grandma never paid her any mind. An endless trail of knitting spilled from her needles to the porch roof below, red as Christmas berries and as cheerfully out of season as the old girl herself.

Tilly sighed. Ever since she’d found the grandma at the DMV, knitting up all the wasted time folks left behind, she’d wondered what to do with her. The DMV people had wanted to send her to an old folks home, but Tilly had stepped in and taken the grandma home instead. Anyone who had the patience to catch up loose seconds and save them for later deserved to be looked after, as far as Tilly was concerned, even if the old girl wasn’t in her right mind most the time.

But then, most of Tilly’s good intentions made for bad decisions. She shook her head and caught sight of her own hand held up to the sun. Patchwork scars deep in her flesh showed like a crazy-work of seams beneath her skin. Ned never liked to look at her hand when she put a light behind it, and Tilly didn’t blame him. Normal folks stayed away from stitchery like her. As long as she didn’t talk to Ned about stitching, they got along fine. She liked having him around, enough that she was pretty sure she’d fallen in love with the man, even if she’d never come out and told him so.

The beast beside her shifted and groaned, golden hooves sinking into the soft soil. Tilly looked down and tightened her grip on its halter.

“Ned!” she hollered. “I need your help with the beast.” She stroked the poor thing’s neck and squinted at Ned’s boots which stuck out from under the old gray Chevy in front of the house. The grandma, two stories up, hummed and knitted.

The beast lowered its head. Tilly stepped back. She’d secured half a tennis ball over its forehead nub with duct tape that wrapped around its jaw, but she wasn’t stupid enough to get in the way of the beast’s head. She’d seen it root up ant hills and such with that nub. Didn’t matter it was broke, it still worked.

Clouds stretched across the sky, fizzled away and still Ned didn’t come out from under the truck. “Damn,” she whispered. She patted the beast’s neck a couple times and wondered what its coat really felt like. Ned had described it to her once, his hands being the ones he was born with and still full of feeling. He’d said the beast’s coat was as soft and silky as her copper-brown hair. Tilly smiled at the memory. That man had a way with words.

“Ned! Now, ya hear?”

“Yes, dear,” the grandma called back.

“Not you, Granny. Ned.”

“Really? I’m not sleepy. But if you say so.”

Tilly caught sight of her easing back in through the window, then watched as she pulled the knitted scarf up and up like a red tongue. Tilly figured the grandma was making to come down to her.

“No. You stay there!”

And of course, that’s when Ned decided to scoot himself out from under the truck and show his heads.

“Make up your mind,” Right Ned called out to her. Left Ned just grinned that hard grin of his around a strand of grass in his teeth.

These were the kind of moments when she wished she’d never stopped work on that heat-seeking dung thrower.

Tilly took a nice deep lungful of pollen-laden air, sneezed and let go of the beast’s halter while she wiped oil from her eyes. She hated her tears. Unlike Ned’s, or the grandma’s, hers were oily and smelled like hot sulphur. If she didn’t scrub them off right away, they left streaks down her freckled cheeks.

Once Tilly could see straight again, she noticed the poor beast was even lower to the ground.

She cleared her throat and put some volume in her voice. “Ned, get over here, both of you! And Granny, you stay right where you are. Just keep knitting. You’re doing fine.”

The grandma poked her head out the window. A teasing wind lifted the white tendrils of her hair like dandelion down riding a child’s wish. She waved one hand, bracelets clinking. “I’ll be right there.”

Tilly sighed. Best intentions and all that.

Ned walked over to where she and the beast stood under the apple tree. He was wearing his clean overalls today, which meant he wasn’t thinking to get any real work done. Time to put another thought in those heads of his, she thought.

“Ned, you know you’re my boyfriend, and I like you plenty, right?”

Right Ned nodded. “I reckon, Tilly,” he said in that shy soft way that made her wish she’d rubbed off the stains beneath her eyes.

“Then you know that sometimes I need help with things around the property.”

Left Ned must have known where she was going, ’cause he made that here-we-go-again look.

Tilly ignored him.

“The beast is looking pretty poor and I’m not sure what it needs. My hands don’t work much for this, but yours should. Would you try and figure out what it wants?”

“Tilly,” Right Ned said, “you know I gave up mingling with creatures when I gave up chew last winter.”

“I know. And I know what it is, me asking this of you. But touching a mind isn’t as addicting as chew, is it? And you kicked that habit, right? I mean, I wouldn’t ask you to do it, but I just don’t have any ideas left.”

As if she’d told it to do so, the beast dropped and lay on its side. It stretched its neck out and rolled its eyes, each breath an effort.

Right Ned sighed, but Left Ned said, “You know I hate this, Til. You know I can’t ever do it just once.”

She looked down at the beast to avoid Left Ned’s gaze. “If you have to, you could always mingle with me, Ned.” She waited a moment, but there wasn’t nothing but the sound of the beast’s labored breathing. Tilly felt heat pulse out from the center of her cheeks and she swore inwardly. No matter how hard she tried, she just never seemed to handle things right. Ned and she were lovers, but he never touched her mind, not even when he was in the fever grip of passion. She hadn’t asked him why, but figured it was her patchwork nature he took a dislike to. She swallowed once and tried again. “I mean if you’d want that.”

“Tilly,” Right Ned said, his voice soft.

“For the beast,” Tilly cut in. Mingling was his business, and if he preferred animal minds, then that’s the way it’d be. But there was no reason he should refuse to help the beast. “Please, Ned?”

Right Ned looked down at the beast with something like sympathy in his eyes. Left Ned just glared at Tilly hard and long.

Sometimes, Tilly thought, that man was a real pain.

“Just to see what it wants,” Right Ned said.

Tilly nodded and Ned kneeled down. He held his hands above the beast’s dirty white flanks.

Tilly watched, like she used to way back in his circus days, while Ned finally got his heads together, closed both sets of eyes and placed his palms on the once snowy-white side of the beast. Ned stiffened. He lifted up off of his heels a bit, then his whole body slumped.

Tilly bit her lip and waited. She knew it’d been a long time since he’d done this, and she hoped she was right about him not getting stuck mind-to-mind cozy with the ailing beast.

That’s what had ended his days in the circus. He’d mingled with the ringmaster’s daughter, and made her scream. The girl accused him of being dirty, illegal, patchwork, but Tilly knew none of that was true. When Ned was born, his mama didn’t let doctors change the way he looked. Ned, all both of him, was more natural than most folks, certainly more than Tilly.

Ned still didn’t move. His heads were bent so low, if she caught him from a side-view, she’d think he only had one head. His shoulders were hunched, soul-sensing fingers spread wide and palm-tight against the beast.

“Too hard,” both Neds said, and Tilly shivered despite the warm air. When those boys worked in unison, it gave her the creeps.

The beast grunted, but it seemed each breath took just a little longer getting to.

“Warm, sunlit fields and soft, untouched laps. Home.” Right Ned looked up at her, tears caught on his girl-pretty lashes. “Tilly, the beast wants to die.”

“No,” she said shaking her head. This had been the first beast she’d taken in, back when Mother and Father had left her to tend the property and all the souls within. It couldn’t be old enough to die. “You’re wrong, Ned,” she said.

But Right Ned had closed his eyes again, bent toward the beast like his ears were in his palms.

Left Ned stared at her. She knew that look. It was the same one he used when the Sheriff had tried to take him to the medical research center back when he was just a little boy.

“You check again,” she said. “Tell it we fenced the back field and the grass is plenty sweet, sweeter than those crazy dreams it’s having. Tell it there’s no reason to die.”

“There’s no time left for it, Til,” Left Ned said. “Belly-wailing isn’t gonna change anything.”

She scowled, torn between trying to decide if she should take the beast to a doctor in town, or try to fix it herself. Then she heard the steady click, click of knitting needles coming closer. The grandma shuffled up to them, wearing a pale yellow nightgown and a pair of Tilly’s black panties underneath. She knitted and looped, her huge black bag hanging from the crook of her arm. The yarn coming out of the bag was white now, instead of red.

Tilly gave Left Ned a look to let him know this wasn’t done yet then turned to the grandma.

“Granny, why you coming down here? I told you it was okay to keep knitting back at the house.”

“Yes, dear. But there’s no time left, so I thought I’d come down. It’s going to rain, you know.”

Tilly glanced up at the sky. The sun was so hot, it’d practically burned a hole in the blue. Weren’t a chance clouds could gather on a day like this.

“Sure thing, Granny,” Tilly said gently. “You go on back to the house now. Don’t want you to get wet.”

She nodded. “So sweet,” she said.

The beast groaned and Tilly spun on Ned.

“What did you do? You better not tell it to die, Ned, or so help me I’ll give you headaches you’ll never forget.”

“Oh,” the grandma said. “Maybe a little more time then?” She stopped knitting and began unraveling the string on the scarf, starting on the red side, furthest away from the loops of white thread on the needles. As she pulled, the yarn disappeared, melting before it even hit the ground. The beast took a couple nice, clear breaths and moved its head a bit.

“Tilly, let it go,” Right Ned said. “This fellow is old. It’s his time to die.”

“You’re just being pig-headed, Til,” Left Ned said.

Right Ned cleared his throat and Tilly knew he’d been thinking the same thing, just hadn’t had the guts to say it.

The grandma hummed and pulled thread.

“It’s not going to die,” Tilly said.

“Tilly,” said Right Ned, “it doesn’t want to live anymore.”

“I don’t care what it wants,” Tilly said, trying to keep the sound of tears out of her voice. “I’m going to take it into town to the doctor. You tell it to hold on. Spring isn’t no time for dying.”

“No time,” the grandma agreed.

Granny stopped pulling on her yarn and right that second, the beast stopped breathing.

Under the apple tree got real quiet all of a sudden. Tilly glanced at the beast, lying still, its eyes fogged over and rolled up at that hard hot sun. Then she glanced at Ned. He looked white too, deathly white. That’s when she remembered he still had his hands and probably his mind on the beast.

Damn. She took a couple big steps forward and pushed Ned hard. He tipped over onto the back of his nice clean overalls. He was stiff, his arms stuck up in the air, hands flat against the wind.

“Breathe, Ned,” she said, as she moved around to touch his face with her fingers. “Both of you.”

Ned breathed. He shuddered once and Left Ned moaned softly, then clamped his mouth hard.

Right Ned wiped tears from his eyes. “Holy, Tilly, that hurts, you know.”

“Well you should have taken your hands off the beast before,” and right there she just couldn’t say any more. The beast was dead, poor thing, and it was her fault. If she would have made up her mind faster, if she would have just taken it down to the doctor the moment she knew it was ill instead of trying to fix everything herself, it would still be alive. Tilly looked down at the pitiful collection of hide and bone and a hard hand of grief closed her throat.

Tears slipped down her face. She should have done something, anything, to save it.

The grandma tottered over to her, her huge knitting bag swinging on her elbow. She shushed Tilly and patted her arm with a paper-dry hand. “There, now, sweetness,” she crooned. “There just wasn’t any time left for it.”

“Sure, Granny,” Tilly whispered, eyeing the seven feet of red knitting that trailed from her bag. Seemed like there was plenty of time if the grandma had wanted to give it up. But Tilly didn’t say any more. That time was the grandma’s to keep or give.

The grandma brightened. “Who wants some hot cocoa?” She took up the needles and pulled a handful of white thread from the bag. Loop, tuck, remove, she knitted her way slowly back to the house.

Tilly leaned against the trunk of the apple tree.

“I’m real sorry, Tilly,” Right Ned said.

“It was my fault,” Tilly said. “I didn’t do the right thing. I didn’t do anything. I killed it.”

Left Ned said, “Shee-it,” and spat.

“Tilly, you know better,” Right Ned said gently. “Everything dies.”

Ned came over and stood close by her, his arm wrapped over her shoulders. He was warm and strong and it felt real good to be comforted by him right then, though Tilly wouldn’t have asked him to do it. She supposed that was one of the things she liked about him. He always seemed to know the right thing to do.

The wind picked up and a flock of starlings threw shadows against ground. Tilly knew there were ways to fix what she’d done wrong. She pulled away from Ned and shivered as wind cooled the sweat down her back.