Entering Normal (18 page)

CHAPTER 24

NED

STU WESTON'S MERCURY HAS BROKEN DOWN OVER IN Pellington, a setback Ned doesn't need on the schedule. From Stu's description, it sounds like a dead battery. Probably all that's called for is a set of cables. How a man can live to be in his fifties, run a business, and still not know enough to carry a set of cables is beyond him. Then the same man will decide to save some money and do his own oil change, cross-threading the drain plug in the process and expecting Ned to fix it. Naturally Ty has taken the morning off again. Probably over at Opal's. Dogs in heat, those two. Nothing for it but to post a notice on the door, close the shop, and head over to Pellington.

He backs the tow truck out onto the street. This time of year, he's called out half a dozen times a week. If it's not dead batteries, it's someone stuck in a snowbank. Ned has never been that fond of winter, and lately he's been sick to death of it. It's hanging on like a disease, dragging him down, making him tired. He can't wait for spring.

That's another appealing thing about Florida: no snow. Ned pictures a new life down there, somewhere on the west coast below the panhandle, by the Gulf. Somewhere away from winter. Away from a house that holds grief.

The Sox have a spring training camp down there. He could catch some games, go fishing every day, maybe buy a little outboard— something with a little zip. A two hundred horsepower Mercury would be nice. He can almost
taste
this life. The salt breeze. A cool beer. Marlin on the grill. A man can dream, can't he?

One of these days he's going to give Joe Montgomery a call. On their Christmas card, Louise invited them to come down. And why not? Maybe he'll just go ahead and buy the tickets. Surprise Rose with a trip to the Sunshine State. If he already had the tickets she couldn't refuse. They'd go for a week, sit in the sun, collect shells, do a little fishing. They'd have dinner out a couple of times with Joe and Louise at one of those shrimp places: Early Bird special, all you can eat. And Rose would come to see the appeal of the place. Maybe they'd look around at real estate. A man can hope, can't he?

STU DOESN'T EVEN HAVE THE GRACE TO LOOK SHEEPISH WHEN the tow truck pulls up.

“What you got here?”

“It was fine this morning.”

“Started right up?”

“Well, maybe it was a little sluggish. Took a time or two to get her to turn over, but then she was fine.”

“Let's take a look.”

Ned slides behind the wheel, turns the ignition. Nothing. Battery's dead, all right.

“How long she been sitting here?”

“Couple of hours. Maybe three. I spent most of the morning in meetings, and when I came out, she wouldn't start up.”

Ned checks the dash. Just as he thought. “Left the lights on,” he says.

Stu roars, like this is the funniest thing he's heard all week. “What'll it take for you not to tell Dottie?” he says.

Doesn't take more than ten minutes to get the Mercury started and Stu on his way. Ned stores the cables back behind the cab and pulls away from the curb. No traffic. This time of year Pellington is pretty quiet, most of the students gone home on semester break.

It's well past noon, and he can't decide whether to grab a bite at the local coffee shop here or shoot back to Normal and stop at Trudy's. Trudy's is dependable—no telling what he'll get here—but he's hungry. As he drives by the restaurant, he slows the truck and glances in the plate glass window, checks to see how crowded it is. He gives a quick glance, then another. Impossible. The woman sitting at a table inside is the spitting image of Rose. Of course, he
knows
she's home, but he'd swear on the Holy Bible she's sitting at that table. When he gets home, he'll have to tell her she has a twin. He presses his foot against the accelerator and is passing by the place when he recognizes the coat: Rose's coat. The blue one he gave her last Christmas.

He executes a U-turn and drives by again. It
is
Rose. She's sitting with a man who looks vaguely familiar—someone he knows but can't pin down because he's seeing him out of context. Not a customer. A moment later it hits him. The professor from the college. Before Rose can look out the window and see him staring, he plants his foot on the gas and takes off, as if he were the one caught doing something wrong.

How the hell did she get over to Pellington? And what is she doing here? And why is she with that writing professor? The questions are giving him a headache.

Back in October, the day after he stopped by the college to check on the refund, Ned quizzed Rose over dinner. “That teacher over at the college,” he said. “You say he left town?”

There was a long beat while Rose chewed a mouthful of food; then she looked straight at him. “Yes,” she said. “He was called out of town.” Her eyes were direct, guileless. He would have sworn she was telling the truth. In spite of the fact that he had
talked
to the registrar's office, had, in fact, seen the man
teaching
the class, he was momentarily unsure of his facts. Why? she asked. Just wondering, he said. He wondered how far to push. Had she lied like this in the past? He would not have believed it possible. Not his Rose. But how could he know? He let it drop.

NOTHING IS CERTAIN ANYMORE. ALL THE THINGS HE believed in and counted on are in question. He'd like to turn the truck around and go into the restaurant and confront Rose, ask her what the hell is going on. Which is, of course, impossible.

He heads directly to the station. He's lost his appetite.

He makes a note in the book to bill Stu, then gets to work on a transmission. He deliberately puts all thoughts of Rose out of his head. But he can't get his heart into his work. Twice he has to start a lube over.

He closes shop early. Outside he sits in the cab of his pickup. He doesn't want to go home yet, doesn't want to face Rose.

At last he switches on the ignition. Minutes later, he pulls up in front of Trudy's, catching her just as she is locking the front door.

“I was just about to close up,” she says.

He nods and turns back to the truck.

“Oh, for heaven's sake, come on in,” she says. “I still have half a pot of coffee left. It'd be a shame to throw it out.”

Inside, it's quiet. Trudy slips behind the counter. She's dressed in jeans, as usual. Rose once told him that Trudy would wear jeans to the Inauguration.

“You want anything with this?” she asks as she pours his coffee.

He's got a headache—never did have lunch—but he doesn't want her to fuss. There's a powdered donut left under the plastic dome. “I'll take that.”

She puts it on a plate. “If you sit in that booth where I can put my feet up, I'll join you.”

He carries their mugs over, slides onto the bench. She sits down with a sigh. “We're not getting any younger,” she says. He notices how tired she looks. She opens at 5:00 A.M. On her feet all these hours.

“Not that I'd want to,” she adds.

“What?”

“Get younger.”

“You wouldn't?”

“Hell, no. Once around is enough. What about you? Would you like to go back twenty years? Live it over?”

If it would turn out differently, he wants to say. If Todd doesn't die. If Rose doesn't turn into this stranger. He wants to tell Trudy about seeing Rose in Pellington, about her lying about the college class, but mention it to Trudy and he might as well take out an ad in the
Banner
.

“To want to live it over means you have regrets,” she says. “I don't even have regrets. Only about Jim.”

“Nothing else?” He thinks about the reputation she had in high school, thinks about how she never worked anywhere but here, never had a chance to pick a different life.

“Oh,” she says, “if we lived our lives again, I think we'd just go on making the same choices. Same mistakes. I don't think we'd be any smarter.”

Is this true? Was it all foretold? Or would a person choose a different route, marry someone else? And what would have happened if he had married someone else instead of Rose? Someone like Trudy.

“You know,” she says. “I've always been a little jealous of Rose.”

“Of Rose?”

“But if I did it all over again, I still don't think I'd be smart enough to latch on to someone steady. Someone good. Someone like you.”

Trudy's words leave him completely tongue-tied.

SPRING

CHAPTER 25

OPAL

OPAL OPENS THE KITCHEN DOOR. PERSON'S GOT TO BE dead not to smell spring. Perhaps even the dead smell spring in their earthen beds. On the far side of the lot, a gray squirrel leaps, bounding—all four feet in the air at once—like a child's toy. She looks across to the small oval of earth Ty has tilled.

According to him, March is still too early to be planting most things. You can't count on the last frost until late May, he says. April is soon enough to plant. Patience isn't a suit in any deck Opal owns. She picks up a packet from the counter.
Sweet peas.
She would have bought them just for the name.

The soil in New England is the darkest she has ever seen, like strong coffee. Nothing like the rust red earth of New Zion. It looks like things could jump straight up overnight. Ty arranged for a farmer to drop a half load of cow manure, and yesterday she forked it in. Even aged, you can smell it a good twelve yards away, surprisingly pleasing for something that is shit. She reads the directions printed on the back.
Depth to Sow: one to two inches. Seed Spacing: One to two inches. Row
spacing: One and a half feet. Days to germination: Seven. Days to harvest:
Fifty-five.
Seems straightforward enough.

With a stick, she draws a furrow, then rips open the packet and dumps the seeds into her palm. They look like withered pebbles. Like pale, dimpled old men. It's amazing that something so
dead
-looking can hold the promise of life. It's almost enough to make a person believe in God. Almost.

She drops each one in the furrow, using her hand to measure distance from seed to seed. How precise do you have to be? She smooths the earth back over them, patting each spot with her fingers, like she's putting them to bed. How has she managed to live until now without planting something in the earth? Except for her roses—a flower greatly overrated in Opal's opinion—her mama wasn't much for gardening. Melva doesn't like to get her hands dirty or damage her manicure.
Water after planting,
she reads.

She finds a jug in the kitchen. It takes three trips before she has watered the entire row. She'll need to buy a hose. And a chair for sitting—one of those wooden ones with arms wide enough to hold a glass of lemonade.

“Hi.” Ty holds out a bag. “Lunch?”

Opal lights up like a bulb. No use pretending otherwise. He only has to look at her and her hormones go into double time. Triple time. Shit, they run the three-minute mile. “Didn't hear the Jeep.”

“Don't have the Jeep. Rode my bike.”

“Didn't hear any motorcycle either.”

“My bike,” he says, pointing over to the drive where a beat-up Raleigh drunkenly leans on its kickstand.

“You ride a bike?” she says. The sight of Ty pedaling all over Normal sets her giggling.

“Something funny about that?” he says in a mock mad voice that only makes her laugh harder. He grabs her around the waist, rolls her to the ground, tickling her until she shrieks.

“You think it's funny?” He's pinned her beneath him.

“No,” she manages, still laughing.

His legs straddle her hips, his hands pin her wrists to the ground.

“You finding something funny?” he says again, his voice now husky, low.

“No,” she whispers. The sun hangs over his shoulder, and she closes her eyes against the glare of it, against the brightness of him. His breath brushes her face. Her legs open to the weight of him. “Nothing funny at all.” And Lord help her, now those hormones are striding flat out, marching straight through Georgia.

“WHAT'S THE BRAVEST THING YOU EVER DID?” TY ASKS HER.

She loves this, lying in his arms after they do it. Every muscle unlaced, every worry banished. Satisfied six ways to Sunday. Played out and flat done in. Just lying and talking lazylike, saying the first thing that pops into your brain.

“Bravest?”

“Yeah.”

“I don't know.” Having Zack? She thinks of how scared she was toward the end when her belly was swollen out hard, knowing in weeks she was going to be giving birth to a baby, a real baby weighing more than seven pounds, a baby she was going to have to push through that tiny hole between her legs—the actual size of which she knew because she had made the mistake of checking, first with her finger, then in a hand mirror—and how she couldn't even think about the pain that lay ahead. But by that time in the whole procedure, she couldn't exactly turn around and go back, so how could you use that as an example of courage? To be truly brave, a person has to have a
choice
. They have to decide to go ahead and do what it is they are afraid of. “Once I swam in a lake when there were copperheads swimming real near,” she says, knowing it really doesn't count. She was only about eight, without sense enough to be scared. “What about you? What's the bravest thing you ever did?”

“Easy one,” he says. He reaches over and gets a chip from the bag on the nightstand, feeds it to her, then licks the salt from her lips. She loves the way he'll eat in bed, like it's a party. “Christ, Raylee,” Billy used to say when she brought a sandwich back to bed. “You're getting crumbs all over the fucking sheets.” The only thing Billy ever wanted to eat in bed was her.

“Well, what was it?”

“Bravest thing was coming back here after you were so cold to me.”

“I was not.”

“Were too.” He feeds her another chip. “You were pure ice. Lady, you were mean.”

“Was not,” she says, pleased.

His finger is now drawing salt on her left breast, which he tongues off. She feels herself grow wet.
Again.
Is there something wrong with her? Is she a nympho? Back in New Zion this is about the worst thing you can be. Most of the girls back there would rather drink lye than admit they
like
sex. For her it's like a drug, like she was born to fuck— an attitude that made Billy so nervous he conveyed the opinion it wasn't natural for a girl to be so enthusiastic about sex. Ty doesn't seem to have this problem.

But how can a person tell love from lust? Lust gets a person in a heap of trouble, but love can land you in a pile of shit. You're not careful, it can land you in marriage, a state Opal is none too anxious to enter. Just think. If she had married Billy, by now she'd have been married, a mother,
and
a divorcée.

During the winter, Melva informed her that Suzanne and Jitter were getting divorced. Well, duh. No shit. From day one it was clear as crystal that match wasn't made in heaven. Jitter only married her because she was pregnant, and she only
got
pregnant to escape her crazy family. It's just as easy to marry someone who wears well. A person can make a point without slitting her throat.

Not one thing Opal has seen to date makes her the least anxious to say
I do
. She has no intention of getting married until she is good and certain she's found the man for her.

“I love you, Opal.”

“Mmmmmmm.” She cuddles closer. Before she says a thing like this again, she is going to be
sure
. She'll have to see a sign bigger than a billboard before she'll make that leap.

He lifts his arm from her stomach, checks his watch.

“What time is it?”

“One. What time do you get Zack?”

“Two-thirty.”

“Want me to get him?”

“What? You don't work anymore?”

He runs a hand over her breast, which—if she can believe what this sweet-talking man says—is perfect. “Taking a few days off.”

She waits.

“Going down to Cambridge.” He moves on to her other breast. “There's an open mike at a coffeehouse there. Ant has some connections. We might do a taping.”

“Oh,” she says, drawing away the tiniest bit.
Musicians have traveling feet.

He pulls her back. “You could come.”

“Can't,” she says.

“Zack could come, too,” he says, reading her mind.

“He's got school.”

“Fuck school. Take him to the science museum, the aquarium.”

“I can't.” And there's work. Since Christmas she's only on two days a week, days she can't afford to take off. And Ty is not exactly swimming in cash.

“You don't want to go?”

“I do.”

“Well, come. It's simple.”

Nothing is ever as simple as it seems. The doorbell cuts off the conversation.

She can't imagine who'd be ringing her bell. Rose? She gets up, pulls on her shorts, Ty's shirt. On the way down the stairs it hits her Billy might have come back. Would he dare show his face again? Except for the checks he's been sending since February, he hasn't been in contact. She peeks out the window to see if there's a black Ram pickup. What she sees is a police cruiser pulled up to the curb.

“OPAL GATES?” THE OFFICER SAYS.

“Yes.” Her tongue turns to cotton.

He holds out an envelope. “Here,” he says. “I have to give you this.” He thrusts the envelope into her hands.

“What is it?'

“Court order.”

He looks down at the paper he is carrying and rattles off something about a summons and a motion. Words she can't take in float in the air.
Domestic relations. Temporary service.

“If you'll just sign here,” he says.

She freezes. She has no intention of signing anything.

“Right here,” he says, pushing a pen into her stiff fingers. “To show you've received the papers.”

“I don't understand.”

“Look,” he says, not unkindly. “These papers have been filed in the district court, and I'm serving you with copies. There will be a hearing. You have twenty days from today to file an answer with the court.”

“The court?”

He shuffles through the papers. “The hearing date is set for March twenty-eighth.”

None of this makes sense to Opal.

“Do you have a lawyer?”

“A lawyer,” she parrots. Her mind brays, A lawyer, a lawyer.

“An attorney. My advice is to get one. You'll need one for the hearing.”

His voice is hollow, as if she is listening from underwater. “Hearing?”

“At the district court. For custody.”

Custody.
The word strikes Opal with the swiftness of a snake. One summer, when she was five, during a trip to Virginia Beach, she was knocked down by a wave. Before she could get up, a second wave roared in, slamming her down in the surf. She wasn't in real danger. Her daddy was there within seconds, scooping her up in his arms, but in the moments before he reached her, she felt panic cross over to terror. This is how she feels now. The cold shock of disbelief, then sheer and burning fear.

“Get off my porch!” she screams. “You get the fuck out of here!”

“Opal,” Ty calls from inside. “Something wrong?”

“No sense getting upset, Miss Gates,” the cop says. He's delivered papers like these before. “I'm just doing my job. As soon as you sign I'll leave.”

Opal's hand shakes as she scrawls her name.

“What's the matter?” Ty is by her side.

“It's Billy. That asshole is serving me with papers.
Papers.
” She opens the envelope, but the print on the page swims. “He's trying to get Zack.”

“You sure?”

“That's what the cop said. He said
custody
. And I'm standing here holding the damn things, aren't I? Jesus.” She's falling into a fast rage. “Well, here's what he can do with his fucking papers.” She tears the first sheet in half.

“Hey. Take it easy.”

“You take it easy. What do you care anyway? What's it matter to you?”

“It matters.”

“Why? Zack's nothing to you.”

“That's not true, Opal. You know how I feel about Zack.”

“But he isn't your son. He's mine. He belongs to me, and no one— least of all that for-shit Billy Steele—is going to take him from me.”

He kneels and starts picking up the papers. “Settle down.”

“Just leave,” she says.

“What?”

“Leave. Just go on. Get out.”

“You want me to leave?”

“Yes.”

“You always do this, you know.”

“Do what?”

“Make me the enemy. When you're scared, you make me the enemy. But I'm not. I love you, Opal.”

“Just leave.”

“You sure?”

“I'm sure.”

He looks at her sadly, then bends down and kisses her. She doesn't give in.

“I'll call later,” he says. “And I'm here, you know. You want me, just call. I'll be here.”

Which is a fucking lie. He won't be here. He'll be in fucking Cambridge, making a fucking recording.

LATER, AFTER SHE'S GOT ZACK TO BED, HE CALLS.

“How you doing?” he says.

How the fuck does he think she's doing?

“I've got a name for you. A lawyer. You're going to need one, and she's good.”

A lawyer. Money. Shit.

“She's over in Springfield. Works alone. Charges the lowest fee around.”

Great. Probably on the edge of getting disbarred.

He gives her the lawyer's name and number, tells her he loves her.

Words are cheap, she thinks.

After they hang up, she retrieves the court papers.

According to the first page, Billy wants to be adjudicated Zack's father. This she doesn't understand. She's never denied Billy is Zack's daddy. It's on the birth certificate, for heaven's sake. Everyone
knows
he's the daddy. Why is he taking her to court to prove something everyone knows is true in the first place? What's wrong with him?

She continues reading. The second page is a petition for the court to appoint a guardian ad litem—an individual, she reads, whose purpose is to evaluate the family and specifically investigate issues relative to custody.