The Woman Who Tried to Be Normal Read online

  The mountain we had to climb was grey and lifeless, full of solid rock, stiff shrubs and grasses, with the occasional Joshua tree you could grab onto for support. Ethel didn’t know its name so we called it ‘the mountain’ the whole time. Judging by the height of the mountain and the steepness of its incline, I calculated sixty minutes to be the approximate duration we would take to reach the summit but in the end, we took only forty-five, largely due to Ethel’s enthusiasm.

  She turned out to be a much better hiker than me. I leaned heavily on my stick most of the way and had to grab onto raw objects with my other hand too sometimes but she tossed her stick less than a quarter of the way up yet managed to get over slippery, steep and narrow corners way faster than I did. When we got to the top, I was winded and panting a little but she wasn’t. Not at all. If anything, the climb invigorated her and brought colour back to her cheeks. She didn’t look in the least like a malnourished housewife when she shielded her eyes from the morning sun and peered down into the valley below us. She looked every bit like a winner. Way more than I did.

  “See anything?” I asked as I collapsed onto a chair-sized rock to catch my breath. Our vantage point was a ridge about twelve miles above the dry lake bed that was rumoured to be where Area 51 was.

  She had her binoculars over her eyes and had been peering through them for at least five minutes at that point. “No tiny green men, no foreigners. Just a ton of brown and white buildings. Hangers, I think. Or warehouses. With a couple of radar antennas scattered around. Guarded by armed guards in camouflage uniforms. White jeeps here and there.”

  “Sounds like a military facility to me.”

  “Yes, but for what purpose?”

  Her question wasn’t exactly directed at me so I didn’t bother putting in the effort to reply. Instead, I wiped sweat from my eyes, struggled to get my breath back to its regular rhythm and turned my attention to the two lizards scampering up the trunk of a nearby tree.

  They moved fast. Faster than my eyes could observe how. I was impressed and made a mental note to find out what sort of species they were and how their limbs worked.

  “Do you want to see?” Ethel suddenly said. “See if you can see anything I can’t?”

  In comparison with the lizards, the dry lake bed below wasn’t all that interesting to me, but, because it was Area 51—famed place of mystery—I took the binoculars she offered me and made the effort to gasp and gape like a normal person would have likely done while looking through it even though I saw hardly any movement below.

  Ethel took the binoculars back within minutes. For the rest of the morning, we moved the binoculars back and forth that way and saw nothing but the guys in camouflage uniforms strolling about the otherwise deserted military facility aimlessly.

  No aliens appeared. No spacecraft. No foreign planes. No foreigners. No prisoners. Not one person not in uniform.

  By noon, when the sun was high in the sky and throwing down intense heat upon the top of our heads, burning our skins, I was refusing her offer of the binoculars already. I had seen enough of nothing much at all and suggested going under a tree, into the shade, for a break, but Ethel, despite having flushed cheeks and sweat trailing down every surface of her skin, wouldn’t budge.

  I moved under the one tree that provided shade on the ridge and relieved myself from boredom by observing the survival mechanisms of the plants around us—Grizzly Bear Cactus, bunch grasses, Mountain Mahogany—as well as that of the wildlife living amongst them.

  There were burrows of different sizes on the ground and from them I saw lizards and jackrabbits popping out and darting away, then jumping in and vanishing faster than I could blink. I saw one coyote peeping at Ethel from behind a rock then dashing off the moment it caught sight of me looking at it, and an orange and black snake hunting a rather large worm with yellow and brown sides. Only when the worm detached its tail while fleeing the snake did I realise it was likely not a worm but a legless lizard of sorts, with a defence mechanism typical of lizards. The detached tail wriggled and writhed in front of the snake for nine full minutes before slowing down and by that time the rest of the legless lizard had already vanished from harm’s reach.

  By sunset, my mind was far from Area 51, aliens and Violet. I had spotted another legless lizard with its tail half-grown a couple of hours later and those lizards became all my mind would think about.

  How long did regrowth of their tails take? How many times could those tails regrow? How did they regrow? What biological mechanisms did they have that we didn’t?

  When Ethel wasn’t looking, I had snatched the flailing tail in front of me away from the snake and kept it in my pocket. I wanted to find out more about its biology later on and with it there, I couldn’t help but wonder….

  What would life be like if we all could be like lizards? If we could lose parts without fear of losing our lives? If we could regenerate ourselves? Wouldn’t that make what we now think of as dangerous activities a lot less dangerous?

  “Helen!”

  I darted out from my thoughts and searched around me till I saw a pair of dark eyes staring at me. “Yes?”

  “I was asking if you’d like to have dinner,” Ethel said. She had a huge beige rectangle running down the length of her body as she spoke. “It’s dark.”

  I ignored the rectangle—and the curiosity it implied—and told her yes. I really was starving, I realised. And I was dehydrated too. Lunch had been nothing but cheese crackers and a can of tuna and although dinner would be nothing but that too, it sounded brilliant now.

  We ate together under my tree but I declined Ethel’s gin bottle when she offered it to me. She had been making me hear whooshing sounds before dinner, just as she had done before she had drunk her gin during lunch, and that was enough to turn me off alcohol forever. I could tell she had become dependent on it and I didn’t want to be dependent on anything, or anyone. Self-reliance was always the best, Lilly always said, and I had seen for myself how right Lilly always was.

  I didn’t tell that to Ethel though, even though the day had cooled and the stars were all out in the dark, cloudless sky above us and the environment seemed perfect for intimate conversation. I didn’t trust Ethel with my thoughts. She was too unpredictable, too untrustworthy, and she was staring endlessly into my eyes again in a way that was making those saxophone notes go off in my ears…

  “About that kiss...” she said with shimmering gold and pink sparkles flashing in front of her eyes. “Two nights ago?”

  “To be honest, it was only to distract you. To get you to calm down. Frankly, I’m not—”

  “Fine. I get it. I do.”

  It was all static electricity in my ears after that. The notes of saxophone ceased to play.

  Time passed.

  “What was Violet like?” I asked when I tired of hearing static incessantly. “Why did you like her so much?”

  “I didn’t like her. I loved her. It’s not the same thing.” She smiled in that moment in a way I never saw her smile before and those pink and gold sparkles reappeared around her eyes even though she was staring at the sand under her hiking boots and not at me. “And if you must know, she was very elegant, always with perfume and something on her lips and eyebrows, and tall, sturdy, plump, and beautiful. She came from a family of many strong women so she was always talking about women’s rights and how we could be more independent on our own without men... I learned so much from her. She was the exact opposite of you. I guess that’s why Hank chose you next. I can understand why he would.”

  Violin strings screeched in my ears after that and Ethel became quite blue again.

  “Say, do you think Hank ever knew what she knew? About his job? About everything you both did in his study?”

  The screeching stopped. “You think he had something to do with it?”

  “I can’t say. He never talks about her, ever, so I don’t know. What do you think?”

  “I… I don’t know. T
he last time we had dinner together, the four of us, just days before she… you know… there was a weird vibe about her. Like she was cautious of them. And they of her. But that was it. I never saw anything that suggested she would be in danger and honestly, I don’t think Hank would have killed her. I think he loved her, just as she…” She sighed. “…loved him. Sometimes.”

  I frowned. I didn’t understand the colours and sounds she was making me see and hear and frankly, I was getting tired of trying.

  “I wanted to be a pilot too, believe it or not. But my parents wouldn’t let me. I tried to defy them and do it anyway and that was when I learned no school would take me. Because I was a girl. ‘Just marry a pilot and he’ll take you flying’, they all said. ‘You don’t need a career. You don’t need education. You’re going to end up as an old maid if you don’t get married soon.’ Well, I believed them until I realised I was up to my armpits in sweat doing nothing but attending to the needs of my sons and husband day after day after day. I wasn’t an old maid, true, but I had been duped into becoming a maid anyway. And what did they give me when I tried to protest? Valium. A tranquilliser. So that I could calm myself from the constant harassment and boredom. Imagine that? Only Violet understood, Helen. Only she got me. That is why I loved her.”

  My eyebrows went up. I never imagined a normal woman would hate being married but apparently some did. Fascinating.

  “The problem with Valium?” she continued. “It doesn’t last. You need more to feel the same calm after some time and you can’t ever stop. When I heard Hank was getting married to you, I wanted to start fresh. I tried to stop the Valium and the alcohol, and guess what? I couldn’t sleep at night, I wouldn’t stop sweating or sniffling, I had hot and cold flashes, migraines and my muscles twitched all day long. I could hardly walk down a staircase and I wouldn’t stop crying for no reason at all. I felt like everyone hated me. I felt like you hated me most of all. After I started taking them again, I realised it wasn’t so but on them, it felt real as hell.”

  Ah. Interesting. I smiled, and genuinely too. “I don’t hate you. I don’t usually hate.”

  She was about to smile back when a deep throbbing roar exploded from the valley below. On instinct, we jumped up and ran to the edge of the ridge but all was black below when we got there. We couldn’t even see the tiny buildings we’d been staring at all day. The roar, however, persisted. I could feel it in my bones, coming into me from my feet, from the mountain we stood on, even though it sounded like it was coming from way below.

  “That sounds like—”

  She stopped because two lines of dotted lights appeared on the floor of the valley, surrounding a black dome-shaped structure that didn’t look like anything a normal person would ever see in their lifetime. The lights flashed three times then vanished, leaving the valley pitch-black as it had been before. Right after that, the roar abruptly stopped and the night became silent again for a good ten seconds, until—

  —a long, almost neon blue light appeared high in the dark night sky, way above us and the mountain we were on, almost among the stars, in the far distance. It was long and thin… exactly as a flying saucer was said to be. It moved from left to right for a bit, in absolute silence, then vanished like the lights on the valley below and never appeared again for the rest of the night, as if it had never been.

  “What was that?” I whispered, turning to Ethel.

  I couldn’t see much of her in the darkness but I could hear a warplane flying in my ears when I turned in her general direction, to the beat of Rachmaninoff. “I have no idea,” she whispered. “But it sure looked a hell lot like a spaceship to me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. No plane can fly that high, Helen. And no plane is as round or wide as that looked!”

  “So... aliens do exist?”

  Ethel nodded and made me hear the ticking of a clock. “We need to find a way to get into Area 51. I need to see it.”

  “How?” I reminded her of the armed camouflage men we had seen below, with big guns in their arms.

  “That won’t be a problem if we just do what our husbands did.”

  “Which is?”

  “Get ourselves employed. By the people who hired our husbands.”

  “I don’t think the military hires women, Ethel.”

  “There’s always a first time for everything, isn’t there?”

  I didn’t disagree with that.

  Chapter 16

  11 July 1975, Friday

  We made it back home at 3pm on Friday after spending one night in a motel showering away the sand and dirt we had on our bodies and a few hours in a mall grabbing some clothes and kitchen items just so we’d look like we’d actually been shopping in the past week.

  Back in Baker’s house, I unpacked my bags, jumped in the shower and dolled up again, then dashed to the kitchen to throw the dinner of roast chicken, potatoes and root vegetables I’d bought from a roadside diner into pots and the oven so that it would look as if I’d cooked the whole meal myself. Just five minutes before Baker arrived home, I yanked a grapefruit from the fridge and threw it into the blender with a handful of ice to make that icy-cold welcome drink he enjoyed so much.

  Baker was none the wiser. He came down from the bath I ran for him, in the fresh clothes I laid out for him, when I was taking food out of pots and laying them neatly onto plates, and kissed me passionately for a good few minutes without even noticing I wasn’t even paying attention to him.

  Next door was a commotion I could hear way better than I could Baker’s seductive mutterings. Baby Daniel was bawling while in his high chair in the kitchen because he’d dropped his bowl of cheese and potatoes onto the floor and Charlie was screaming at Ethel for having given him a porcelain bowl in the first place because it was now a smashed, blood-drawing hazard for anyone who might be careless enough to walk by barefoot. Ethel was yelling at Charlie for not lifting a finger to help and screaming at baby Daniel to be quiet too, and whenever I glanced over, I would see blood-red smoke coming out of blue heads and hear both gunshots and the crackling of wood.

  “Are you feeling naughty too?”

  I turned my eyes back on Baker who was starting to rub up against me in a way that brought him great pleasure and said, in that dainty, sugary Marilyn Monroe voice he loved, “Of course.”

  I wasn’t actually in the mood and would have preferred to have dinner first, frankly, since I was starving from the exertions of travel but because Hank had already stiffened below the waist and was staring at me with faint pink and gold sparkles around his eyes in a manner that was making me hear saxophones in my ears, I knew I didn’t actually have a choice. His question wasn’t a real one. I once said ‘no’ to him when he looked and sounded exactly the same way and he was hostile towards me until I gave in. I learned then sex wasn’t optional in a marriage. It was do or die.

  “I think you need a spanking,” Hank said, before letting out a deep and musical bear-like growl. “Yes. In fact, I think you deserved to be spanked right now.”

  “Oh, no, don’t,” I said like Marilyn Monroe would, although I let him grope me in any which way he liked. “I’m so ashamed!”

  He laughed, swept me off my feet and carried me all the way to our bedroom on the second floor the way men in movies often did with their women. He hawed too, as he sometimes did for fun, and I giggled, in that girly way he liked, without saying a word about all the things I’d seen and heard on our way out of the kitchen.

  Ethel had been staring at us, while Charlie and Daniel screamed their lungs out at her.

  When looking at her, I heard gunshots. And bad violin notes. And the scrubbing of brush on a hard pavement.

  Again.

  Chapter 17

  12 July 1975, Saturday

  Saturday morning, I was packing crumb cake, spicy relish-filled eggs, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a cocktail of fruit for Baker’s lunch out when I saw Ethel enter her kitchen
alone. Baker was upstairs, with a protruding belly from the huge breakfast I prepared for him, getting ready to go hike the Santa Susana Mountains with the boys till dinner so I was alone too.

  She went right to raiding her fridge in her pyjamas, looking as dishevelled as she always did in the mornings and made me hear whooshing and the buzz of static electricity.

  I waved when she looked up, to get her attention, because I had something to tell her. Baker had told me something interesting at breakfast and I wanted to talk with her about it.

  She saw me but didn’t wave back or smile like a normal neighbour would have. She shut her fridge, turned and walked out the kitchen without acknowledging me. The Marshmallow Man stumbled in as she went, shouting “Mama! Mama!” and the name of a popular children’s cereal over and over but she didn’t look at him either.

  I thought I heard a single note of saxophone when she went out but I couldn’t be sure because there were a few notes of bad violin playing in my ears too. Likely because The Marshmallow Man had been left standing alone in the kitchen, staring after her in perfect silence with his tiny mouth wide open and his eyes glistening with longing.

  I tasted wood just looking at him. He was, after all, not even as tall as a kitchen counter and still in diapers. Too small and adorable to be learning about rejection. To distract him from his own feelings, I lifted my arm and waved violently to catch his attention.

  The bad violins in my ears stopped when he saw me. He grinned and I began hearing Bach and tasting marshmallows all over again. “Oh-lah Mrs Baker!”