The Woman Who Tried to Be Normal Read online

  “Oh-lah Daniel!”

  In that moment, Gigi walked in with a handbag slung over her shoulder. She smiled and waved the moment she saw me waving, then lowered herself so that she was face to face with The Marshmallow Man and spoke some words I could not hear, with the sort of expression my teachers often gave my classmates but never me.

  “Hello Mrs Baker!” The Marshmallow Man yelled soon after. He giggled, jumped into Gigi’s arms for a tight hug and the many kisses she planted on his creamy, pudgy cheeks and made me hear only harps from then on.

  I don’t think he thought much about all the bad feelings his mother made him feel after that.

  Ten minutes after our husbands left for their hike, I barged into Ethel’s bedroom and shut the door behind me.

  Ethel was on her side of the bed, leaning against her upholstered floral headboard, staring at me in shock with a cheery yellow tablet in one hand and a glass of colourless liquid in the other, full to the brim. There was a brand new bottle of gin on her bedside table too.

  “What the hell, Ethel?”

  “Get out. I don’t want you in here.”

  “Just yesterday, you said you wanted us to be the best of friends.”

  “I was mistaken. Gigi!” A highlighter yellow electrical current like squiggle darted from the top of her head to her toes as she tossed her yellow pill into her mouth and emptied her glass after it.

  “Did something happen? With Charlie?”

  She swallowed hard, dropped her glass on her bedside table and wouldn’t look at me.

  “Is this because he didn’t allow you to go get a job? Hank was terribly against me getting a job too. I brought it up last night and he was so adamant about me never having to work, we nearly argued.”

  “It’s none of your business,” she said. Frostily. While avoiding my eyes. While highlighter yellow currents rushed up and down her person like she were electrified. A single gunshot sounded in my ears.

  I didn’t understand what I was looking at and hearing. I went to her, sat myself down next to her and asked her to explain herself.

  She didn’t. But she did turn her hard brown eyes towards me and hold them in mine without blinking much. I soon heard everything she could not—or would not—put into words.

  It was a saxophone melody with a quick tempo. A full tune.

  It was entirely my business.

  Hate could make a person act like a crazy bitch but, apparently, love could too.

  I tasted saliva—which meant I was feeling nothing—so I looked away. I wasn’t interested in romance with Ethel. Or anyone else at Northridge for that matter. I was in Northridge to find answers. That was all I was interested in.

  The saxophone tune stopped. Screaming violins took its place along with the scrubbing of brushes. Ethel screamed for Gigi again.

  A minute later, Gigi was in the bedroom in front of the bed, staring from Ethel to me and back again with wide, somewhat worried, eyes. “Yes, Mrs Ashlock?” she said, with a huge beige rectangle running down the length of her body.

  “Remove this person from my room.”

  The beige rectangle morphed into messy brown squiggles in front of Gigi’s eyes. She turned to me and opened her mouth but didn’t say anything I could actually hear. I suppose the memory of how difficult it had been to remove me from the family room before had come back to her and the thought of having to get me down two entire flights of stairs against my will was entirely depressing to her. She stared, and stared, with her mouth wide open, but still no words came out.

  “I’ll see you downstairs,” I said instead. “Five minutes. I just need to talk to her about the trip our husbands are taking us on.”

  Ethel turned sharply towards me. “What trip?”

  “We’re going to Mexico together. The four of us. Next week. Didn’t Charlie tell you?”

  That saxophone tune came back to my ears though the bad violin and brushing remained. Ethel lowered her eyes to the carpet and told Gigi to excuse us for five minutes.

  Gigi fled within seconds. I opened my mouth to speak the second she shut the door behind her but Ethel beat me to it.

  “Can I ask you something?” Messy brown squiggles appeared in front of her eyes, vibrating like spaghetti would when shaken about in a saucepan.

  “Sure.”

  “Have you ever fancied a woman? Any woman?”

  I sighed. I was, frankly, very tired of being asked that. “No.”

  “Don’t lie.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Then how on earth could you tell how I feel about Violet?” She turned her eyes back on me and the squiggles over her eyes doubled in size.

  “It was just there.” In the sounds I hear just looking at you. You sound just like Baker and Ariel do every time I mention Violet, except with the sound of a brush scrubbing on pavement too—a sound that tells me a human being is feeling shame. Only individuals in love with some forbidden object of affection ever sounded that way. I had heard it enough times in my lifetime to know with certainty what it stood for.

  “It isn’t obvious at all,” she hissed. “Nobody else ever saw it. Not my husband, not Violet’s husband, yet you knew! Right away too! The only way that could have happened is if you felt it before. Maybe just for a little while? Just for a little bit?” She stared hard into my eyes and made me hear warplanes overhead.

  I sighed again. I wasn’t interested in having such a conversation with her. She was Baker’s neighbour. Charlie’s wife. There was no way I was telling her about the real me. It wouldn’t be safe for me. “I grew up around women like you,” was the most I would say about it. “That’s how I could tell. Not because I fancy women myself.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “For God’s sake, Ethel! I’m not.”

  The scrubbing of brush on a pavement became deafening in my ears. Her eyes were on me, wide and wild. She looked as if she were practically begging me to say otherwise.

  I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I looked instead at the wallpaper on her walls and paid close attention to how they continued into her en suite bathroom and ended up lining the cupboards and drawers within.

  “In that case, get out. Please.”

  “It doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. As a friend.”

  One note of saxophone and four screeches of bad violin screamed in my ears. Ethel laughed. Sort of. “I’ll take it. I’ll take whatever I can get since I now seem to be the only woman in the world with strange feelings for women, right?”

  I didn’t tell her what I knew of that.

  I simply remained by her side, in silence, for way longer than five minutes.

  Chapter 18

  15 July 1975, Tuesday

  Gigi waved us off from Charlie’s porch, with The Marshmallow Man waving in rhythm with her in her arms, when we left for Mexico. She had agreed to stay over for the duration of our trip to take care of him, for extra dollars of course.

  When Baker drove us away, she hollered ‘goodbye’ but The Marshmallow Man followed with ‘ah-dee-ohs’, much to his father’s dismay. Charlie spent the rest of the drive to the airport giving Ethel a lecture on how important it was for her to correct The Marshmallow Man’s language before it got out of hand but she looked like she hardly even heard him. She hadn’t even properly looked at The Marshmallow Man as we left, even though he had been frantically calling for her, desperately trying to get her to wave back.

  She wasn’t at all interested in interacting with me either. The whole way over, while seated next to her in the back seat, I tried, many times, to make conversation but she never once gave me anything more than single worded answers. She did everything she could to not look my way too. It was so obvious, even the men seated up front noticed.

  Baker asked, when she went out of the car to use a washroom, if we had a falling out. I denied it. I didn’t want him thinking I was the sort of woman who couldn’t get along with others so I told him she was likely simply
suffering from P.M.S..

  Turns out, the P-word was explanation enough. Baker stopped asking once I said it.

  We arrived in La Paz late in the afternoon of the same day, when the sun was high in the sky, blinding our eyes while burning our skin. Unlike the rest of Mexico’s touristy resort areas, La Paz was, back then, an authentic sprawling and slightly dingy Mexican city inhabited mainly by real Mexican fishermen. It had a rustic, laid-back vibe that got our husbands talking about moving into a house there, by the sea, for retirement within minutes of travelling in a local taxi.

  Our hotel was a few blocks away from the beach, surrounded by hundreds of swaying palm trees, right next to a cathedral whose quaint bells could be heard chiming in through the hotel’s thick, brightly-coloured walls at intervals. From the outside, it looked like a mishmash of clay buildings randomly constructed alongside each other, carelessly taped together by a large piece of red-tiled roof, but on the inside, it was decorated to perfection with massive furniture pieces, brightly-coloured textile elements and charming Aztec-inspired carved beams.

  We got rooms next to each other, side by side, across the hotel’s in-house restaurant and bar, and they were both almost exactly identical. Each room had a single King-sized bed covered in dark green velvet bed coverings, surrounded by dark wooden head rests, walls that were painted green and cream and floral curtains that were a mash of reds, browns, greens and beiges. The patterned carpet was soft and much cleaner than the one at the motel Ethel and I stopped by when in Las Vegas. We also had colour TVs, radios, in-room telephones and coffee makers that the motel in Las Vegas hadn’t had.

  The four of us spent an hour unpacking and freshening up from the day’s travel before meeting up again for a round of drinks at the hotel’s in-house bar. I was all refreshed and cheerful when we reunited with Charlie and Ethel to cross the cactus-filled garden between our rooms and the bar together, until we came upon a couple heading back to the rooms, who said hello to us in German-accented English.

  The second I caught sight of the female of the pair, I shuddered against my will, right in front of her eyes. Sauerkraut appeared in my mouth when Charlie and Baker said hello and the couple stopped to say hello back.

  “Rolf Jaeger,” the male of the pair said with his hand extended towards Charlie. He looked like he was in his mid-forties and was much taller than Ethel and I but about the same height as our husbands. His hair was, like his female companion’s, a creamy-looking shade of blond infused with platinum and golden accents.

  The four of us took turns shaking his hand and I felt myself shudder again when Baker introduced me as his wife to them both.

  “Weslyn,” the female said to all of us when it was her turn to shake our hands. Even though she looked younger than her male companion, her glamorous red lips, neater hair and extremely penetrative gaze made her look wiser and more sophisticated. “Rolf’s sister.” She smiled widely at our husbands who were about the same height as her, more or less, but less so at Ethel and I who were much shorter.

  I smiled back, politely, because I knew it was what every normal person would do, even though my palms were starting to get all sweaty from having taken her hand into mine, even if only for a brief moment.

  Rolf told us they were from Germany, which none of us found surprising, and that they were going to be in La Paz for another ten days. Baker and Charlie seemed to like him and shared our sightseeing itinerary with him with as much enthusiasm as he had done when sharing his.

  The whole time the men talked, I kept my eyes on them, even though I could feel, from the corner of my eye, Weslyn periodically glancing at me with her extremely blue ones. I didn’t dare look back. I was tasting lemons, sawdust, beef and sauerkraut in her presence and was doing everything I could to behave unperturbed and normal.

  When the men, at last, ended their small talk and bid each other goodbye, I made for the bar without looking back though I did my very best to walk like nothing much was much of a matter at all.

  Fact was though, I wasn’t feeling normal then. Far from it.

  “Please talk to her.”

  Baker stared at me with grave eyes from his seat across the table at the hotel’s in-house bar, completely oblivious to my sudden desperate desire to have a stiff drink wash away the awful taste of sauerkraut in my mouth. We had been seated at a four-seater outdoor table for the past ten minutes, watching Ethel and Charlie arguing while standing in front of the bar on the inside.

  Charlie was screaming at her for having downed three shots of tequila in the time it took the bartender to shake up the two pitchers of frozen watermelon margarita they ordered and she was screaming back incoherently because of it.

  “I don’t want her ruining our vacation and I bet Charlie doesn’t either.”

  “She doesn’t seem to be in any mood for talking, honey. I don’t think she’s going to want to listen to me,” I replied. Truth was, having seen that blonde, red-lipped German lady, I wasn’t in much of a mood for talking myself.

  “She will if you talk her out of it. I know she will.”

  Baker gave me that I-know-best expression he had been using with increasing frequency of late but I still thought him wrong. Ethel’s body was clearly messed up that day. All those chemical concoctions within her bloodstream had thrown her brain into disarray so I knew no amount of talking would ever be able to stabilise her emotions if her physiological system wasn’t stabilised. All the same, I told him I would try anyway, because I knew he didn’t like being told ‘no’. No man wants a wife who is bitchin’ and gripin’ all the time, his mother’s book said. I made sure I wasn’t the sort of wife a man wouldn’t want.

  Baker thanked me for trying, right as a giant crash sounded from the bar we had been staring at. When we looked back over, Charlie had red slush dripping from the top of his head down the rest of his body and there was glass all around his feet. Ethel was screaming with a glass jug of reddish frozen margarita in her hand and that too ended up as broken glass on the floor when she flung it in the direction of Charlie’s chest and stormed away without once looking back.

  “God! Women!” Charlie screamed, with sparkly, electrical current-like green lines expanding from the edges of his person towards his middle. He nodded thankfully at the swarm of Mexican waiters who ran over to offer him napkins and sweeping as he shook the slush off his sleeves and hair.

  “Talk some sense into her, honey, please!” Baker said to me.

  Just to make him happy, I ran after her.

  Chapter 19

  15 July 1975, Tuesday

  I found Ethel back in her hotel room raiding the mini bar and pouring those teeny bottles of brew down her throat like they were mere flavoured water. She hadn’t closed the door properly enough for the lock to catch so I was able to get in without needing her permission. She hadn’t pulled up a chair either so there she was on the carpet, kneeling in front of the mini bar with the enthusiasm of a monkey exploring a basket of fruit.

  The room was dark and dreary because its gaudy floral curtains had been drawn. It smelled like a mix of alcohol and air freshener and I couldn’t help but recall a few of the hospitals I’d been in as a child because of its smell.

  “We’re on holiday, Ethel,” I said when I was right behind her. “We’re supposed to be happy and having the time of our lives.”

  She didn’t respond. She remained hunched over with her legs carelessly tossed to the side, emptying teeny bottles into her mouth till there was none left to empty. Once the tiny store of alcoholic liquids ran out, she burst into tears.

  “God. Get up.” I dragged her up by the armpits and sat her down on the bed. She was like a ragdoll—floppy and uncommunicative—and she wouldn’t lift her head to look at me so I gave up trying to look into her eyes myself. I got a towel from the en suite bathroom and used it to scrub tears off her cheeks the way my mother used to do for me whenever I got upset decades ago. When I was done, I gave her a good rub on her back, again l
ike how my mother used to do, intending to make her feel better but it only made her sob all the more.

  I gave up and tossed the towel aside. “Why are you crying? What do you possibly have to cry about? You have everything a woman could want. You’re accepted by society, you have a loving husband, you have children, you have a home, you have friends. Nobody is trying to kill you, you have enough money to go on holiday, so why on earth are you so darned sad all the time?”

  Ethel didn’t say and refused to look at me so I picked up her chin and turned her head towards my eyes so that she would.

  “Tell me what happened. Did Charlie do something to you?”

  Ethel stared. Her eyes looked almost black in the dim room and were swollen and covered in liquid. Staring at her, I heard more bad violin notes, some scrubbing and three notes of saxophone. She shook her head.

  “Was it... Hank? Gigi? Daniel?”

  She shook her head and burst into sobs yet again. Scrubbing of brush on a pavement was all I heard in my ears then. She turned as blue as a blueberry and highlighter yellow electrical current-like squiggles began shooting from her head to her shoes.

  I didn’t know what else to do so I put my arms around her skinny frame and hugged her. The last time I gave her a hug, it did wonders for her colour so I was hoping it would do the same this time and get her back to being the colour Baker wanted her to be.

  My hug worked. Somewhat. The scrubbing in my ears faded and the back of her person became less blue. Her sobs metamorphose into mere sniffles.

  “Who was it?” I asked, when my shoulder was thoroughly damp with tears and uncomfortably stiff and hot from holding on to her. “Who hurt you?”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “My fault?”

  “I don’t like me either. So I get it. I totally get it.”

  I pulled away from her to get a better listen to her body language and all I heard were saxophones. Nothing else.