The Woman Who Tried to Be Normal Read online

  I suppose, with what they knew about women, they genuinely believed friendship was the only good a woman had to offer another.

  I stopped trying to squirm away from her hands after that and allowed myself to enjoy Ethel’s affections more openly. It felt surprisingly gratifying. No woman, other than my mother, had ever shown me that much attention in all my thirty-nine years of life. Even in the water, when we were surrounded by sea lion pups and bulls, puffer fish, red skinny crabs and, for a while, even a school of dolphins, every time I looked over, her eyes would be, not on any other fascinating aquatic being, but on me.

  When we were left alone on a small sandy beach with the remnants of our lunch picnic of sour cream and cilantro, white fish tacos, rice, lime and beer, she kissed me on the cheek and on the lips and even in my hair multiple times.

  The men, when they got back from the mangrove-fringed lagoon at the back of the cliff-covered island we were on, presumed we had been talking the whole time they were away, not knowing Ethel had been doing everything but and I had been letting her do it.

  We were, after all, on holiday, on a postcard beach with wind in our hair and sand on our skin, with abnormally salty air in our nostrils, glowing with health and thoroughly fed, free from domestic chores and the obligations of daily life. It wasn’t unpleasant to be kissing in a situation such as that. It felt unavoidable.

  By the time we sailed back to the mainland, Ethel had gotten at least fifty kisses onto me. She had taken every opportunity we got. When the men were distracted by the sighting of a whale, when the men stared at an island full of bird rookeries, when the men jumped into the sea to check out a big reef... Under normal circumstances, I would have preferred to be where the men were. I wanted to know what the whale and birds looked like too, and see what was in that reef. Yet somehow, after the apples and all that orange fog, and all those soft kisses and warm squeezes of the hand, I was starting to find Ethel more of interest to me than wildlife was. It was most unusual. For me, in particular.

  The only time I said no to her was when we were back on the beach of La Paz, in front of a flimsy wooden toilet nestled in a secluded area behind a chunk of palm trees. I wanted to lock the door after going in but Ethel insisted on barging in with me. She wanted to kiss me properly, she said. We tussled over it for a little bit because I had business to settle that I didn’t want her or anybody else seeing me do. Eventually I won and she remained outside but later on, when we left the men to go into a little store selling art craft made of seashells, wood and other local materials, she took me into her arms and pecked me on the lips multiple times with a vengeance.

  We were standing behind a tall and wide rack of handmade wall mural tiles at that point so I let her. Since I was also preoccupied with choosing the right mural for Baker’s home, I barely even bat an eyelid. All that changed when I heard the saxophones in my ears stop and change into drumbeats of fear.

  I turned to Ethel and saw her three shades less brown than before, looking almost beige because there was a layer of white over her person. Her mouth was open but soundless and her eyes wide and fixed on the space a short distance behind and above my head.

  Someone tall was behind me. And, from the look on Ethel’s face, that someone had seen her kiss me.

  On instinct, my eyes darted to my left, out the grimy window of the shop we were in. Charlie and Baker were still out there, seated on the patio of the cafe next door, laughing and joking about something with beer bottles still in their hands. They weren’t looking our way.

  Not them. Who then? Who would make Ethel look and sound like she’d only just seen a ghost? I had an idea who it might be but I didn’t really want to have to see it myself, until… the person behind me cleared her throat and said ‘hi’ in a cold, unfriendly voice.

  Sour lemons appeared in my mouth at once. Then soap. And sawdust and sauerkraut. All the same tastes I used to have every time I was made to visit a doctor as a child. I was right. And I knew I had no choice but to turn around, so I did. True enough, there she was.

  Weslyn Jaeger. The German tourist who was on holiday with her brother. Imposing at 1.78m of height, looking down at Ethel and I with disapproval all over her face. With the sunlight from the window behind her shining directly against her back, she looked like a dark silhouette, with the top of her champagne blonde hair, cropped short like a guy’s but puffed up in a feminine buoyant bob, looking almost white. Those bright red lips of hers looked almost like blood in that light. And that face… that stern, serious, unsmiling, intelligent face covered in lines made from previously emotional times was… subtly horrified. She sounded every bit like a vintage telephone ringing as she stared at us and I—

  —had to look away, even though I knew very well how dangerous it was for me to be doing so. The sauerkraut in my mouth had become unbearably sour and I just couldn’t bear tasting any more of it for one second longer. I forced a smile and turned back to the rack of murals instead, tried hard to pretend as if I were terribly interested in home decor even as drumbeats banged against the sides of my head and made blood within it rush all the way to my toes.

  “Your husbands invited my brother and I to dinner when we ran into them out there,” Weslyn said. She said the word ‘husbands’ with great emphasis and I could see murky dull green splotches covering her face when she did so—the sign of disgust in a human being. “They sent me to get you. We’re leaving in five minutes.”

  Ethel inhaled deeply and turned her eyes to her feet. She sounded to me like a mess of noise—scrubbing brush and drumbeats—and didn’t seem capable of speaking words. I realised I was going to have to reply, even though the mere thought of Weslyn hearing my voice made me feel like I was drowning in a pool of damp, stinky, century-old sauerkraut while simultaneously being on the verge of getting a heart attack. “Okay,” I mumbled.

  Just as I feared, Weslyn raised an eyebrow. I heard one ring of a vintage telephone, then the faint chugging of a heavy, overloaded train. She observed me for a few never-ending seconds before turning to Ethel and observing her just as acutely.

  I began to wish I never told Baker my name was Helen.

  “Good,” Weslyn said, turning her sharp blue eyes back onto me and making my heart trip over a beat when she did so. “I’ll see you both back at your husbands’ table.”

  Against my will, I gulped and failed to hold my eyes in hers, even though I could tell that was precisely what she was trying to figure out if I could do.

  I fumbled through the rack of murals in front of me, trying hard to keep my hands steady, and mumbled something that would indicate I agreed while pretending to look like I was still interested in shopping even though that was really just about the last thing that was of concern to me at that point in time.

  Weslyn left the shop after that but all the awful tastes in my mouth never went away. The drumbeats in my ears didn’t either.

  Ethel and I didn’t speak after she had gone. I grabbed the mural that was closest to my hand just so I could have something to say for my time in the shop and went to pay for it. Ethel, on the other hand, simply walked out.

  She didn’t peep at me or give me one of those long, suggestive gazes this time.

  Chapter 21

  16 July 1975, Wednesday

  The Jaegers took us to a local family restaurant famous for its giganormous portions of fresh seafood. It wasn’t located within a building but on the outskirts of the beach, over a patch of flat, rocky sand and simply put together under a flimsy-looking wood and palm roof. The kitchen was in the rear, separated by a row of chair-less tables on which mismatched cutlery, plates and uncooked vegetables were laid out, open for all to see. The dining area was out front, filled with portable tables and chairs that had only locals on them. We were the only gringos in the house, and the only ones not fighting to have our voices heard.

  The place was loud. Very loud and… excessively colourful. A roving mariachi band was screaming their music from all co
rners, locals were screaming conversations, waiters were screaming orders and the thick smell of grilled food in the air, mixed with the scents of sea, sand, plants and soil made it very difficult for me to taste my own feelings. I had a bad feeling all that noise would end up as an opaque wall of sound in front of me the way it always did in shopping malls, and I was right…

  Within seconds of simply standing at the entrance, all the colourful shapes and patterns in the atmosphere combined to form a cylinder of sound around my eyes. I tried my best to focus on my thoughts—I tried to think of Ethel and apples and the lovely day we had—but it was extremely hard to avoid noticing the sound when I was feeling so self-conscious.

  Weslyn was right there. Centimetres away. I could imagine what would happen if I ended up blind because of sound right in front of her eyes and I didn’t like how that very thought made me feel at all.

  Lucky for me, Baker wanted a quiet night himself. He picked out a table at the very edge of the restaurant where it was comparatively quiet and got us seated there. Thanks to him, the sound cylinder in front of my eyes became more translucent than opaque and I was generally able to continue being able to see despite the noise being there. Because of that, I really appreciated his presence that day.

  Our table was rectangular and just enough for six people, which was exactly what we were. The men sat on one side, facing the inside of the restaurant, with Rolf in the middle, while the women sat on the other, opposite their partners, facing the view of the beach. Weslyn ended up between Ethel and I because of Rolf’s choice of seat but neither of us minded.

  Stealing glances at each other had become just about the last thing on our minds. She had been giving us dirty looks on the walk over, with that observant unsmiling manner she seemed to always use to take in the world, and neither of us wanted to provoke her further.

  Thankfully though, once our mass of food arrived and the men began conversing, she became a great deal more interested in listening to them than she was in glaring at us with disgust.

  Her brother, who smiled way more often than she did, told our husbands all about the pharmaceutical company they ran and worked at back home in Germany. He went to great lengths to describe the painkiller they were presently trying to develop too.

  I did my best to look attentive as he spoke, or at least engrossed in slurping pulpy chocolate clams out of their shells, though what I was truly thinking about was what I would possibly say the next time Weslyn tried to talk to me.

  What would Lilly suggest?

  Not speaking at all, obviously. But since that was next to impossible, then… one word answers would be the next safest bet. One word answers in my most Floridian-sounding accent. That should be enough to keep her from noticing how my voice sounded—

  “Helen!”

  I snapped out of my thoughts and found Baker and the rest of the table staring right at me. The way they looked at me made me feel as if I were standing in the middle of a train station with a mess of heavy, overloaded trains charging by me concurrently. “Yes?”

  “Are you feeling all right, honey?”

  “Yes.” I smiled because I was desperate for them—Weslyn, especially—to go back to thinking I was okay. “What’s up?”

  “I was just telling them about that fruitcake you do so well but I couldn’t remember the name you gave it. What was it?”

  Shit. A three word phrase. Two words more than I would have wanted Weslyn to hear. I didn’t want to say it, I wouldn’t have said it if I had a choice, but since I didn’t… “Treasure Chest Bars.”

  The men smiled at the name and gave approving nods but Weslyn didn’t. She kept on staring at me, for way longer than was normal for a person to stare at an acquaintance. A single, deafening chugging train chugged on in my ears. She opened her red-lipped mouth to say something and I might have died of fright had Charlie not suddenly exclaimed—

  “Why is dessert taking so long to arrive?”

  Our table was cluttered with over-sized plates of uneaten shrimp, lobster, octopus, crabs, fried fish and stacks of tacos when he said so, along with bottles of icy cold beer and Pina Coladas in whole, hollowed-out pineapples, so it sounded absolutely illogical for him to be wanting more. I thought it way out of character for him to be that demanding too. He had always been easy-going and quiet in the presence of non-family, unlike Baker, so him asserting his desires that way was most unusual.

  Still, Rolf indulged him. He looked at his watch—an expensive Swiss make—and told him the night was still young.

  “It is not young,” Charlie replied, with clear irritation in his voice and tiny greyish-blueish specks of dust all over his forehead—a sign of tiredness in a human being. He frowned as if all that food he had just eaten was not at all to his liking and had left him in a terrible mood.

  “Maybe some people just like to eat late? Real late?” Rolf said, as grey lines began running down his face like bars of a jail cell. His eyes fell on a space some distance behind Weslyn’s head, at the long communal table in the middle of the restaurant that had balloons tied to each of its eight chairs and a handwritten sign that read ‘Reserved’ on it. “We can’t always know when dessert will come. Especially when we’re in a different country.”

  “In America, we prefer to always have dessert at the time everyone thinks dessert should be,” Baker suddenly said, suddenly as greyish-blueish around the forehead as Charlie was. His face had veered from friendly to slightly menacing in the blink of an eye yet again and those crevices between his eyes were now a great deal deeper.

  Rolf took another long glance at the table with balloons then sighed. The grey bars over his face grew thicker. He said nothing, as if he had nothing to say. No answer to Baker’s statement.

  “A watched pot never boils, gentlemen,” Weslyn suddenly interrupted, with a firmness seldom seen in women back in Northridge. “Maybe dessert won’t come if it knows you’re waiting for it? Maybe dessert has gone for a long walk down the desert, far away from you? Who knows? We’re not God. There are forces way bigger than us that none of us have fully understood. Have some patience.”

  That shut Charlie up. And Baker too. For a brief moment Rolf seemed to want to say more about it but he never did.

  For the next half hour, our table cleared the platters of fresh seafood on it in silence. Dessert did come promptly, when those plates were cleared. Flan topped with a shot of Baileys. It was delicious.

  Weslyn broke the silence when we were all done with our Flan. She invited Baker and Charlie to join Rolf and herself on a tour of the local morgue the next morning. They were going to do some research for their pharmaceutical company, she said. To look into common local causes of death and the like. To get down to the ground with disease, find out what’s happening. “Will that be of interest to you?” she asked while looking at both Baker and Charlie, but not Ethel or I.

  They said it would be.

  She did eventually turn to Ethel and I to ask if we too would be interested but warned us there would be open cadavers with torn flesh and inner organs pulled out, covered in blood, possibly deformed or blackened from disease. The smell we would encounter would also be something we wouldn’t forget for the rest of our lives, she added. It would stay on our clothes and even in our hair for a while.

  Ethel declined her offer right away. The beers and Pina Colada she drank at dinner had brought colour back to her face and she seemed way less interested in staring at her toes than she had been when we first got to the restaurant. Still, she wouldn’t look Weslyn in the eye.

  Weslyn sounded pleased with her reply and turned to me to ask what I wanted to do.

  My palms and armpits got all sweaty the second our eyes met. “Ethel,” I mumbled and immediately regretted having chosen to say it when I realised how awkward and unnatural it sounded out of my head. The tone of my voice made me sound like I was hiding something. A terrible choice!

  Weslyn narrowed her eyes and didn’t say anything a
bout it, but for the rest of the night, every time those piercing blue eyes of hers travelled my way, I heard a very heavy, very overloaded train rushing by my ears.

  Every time I heard it, I tasted really bad sauerkraut. Sour, pungent and most likely rotten sauerkraut. My way of experiencing extreme fear.

  I hadn’t tasted sauerkraut quite like it in a very long time so that taste inevitably brought my thoughts back to the last time I did.

  That was years and years before, buried deep in a corner of my brain I didn’t want to go looking at… Back when normal human beings used to talk about me as if I wasn’t even in the room, when doctors and policemen told my mother, and everybody else, that it would be better for the country if I were put to sleep forever, and there had been nothing I could say or do to change anybody’s mind about it.

  Chapter 22

  17 July 1975, Thursday

  Baker left for his excursion to the morgue early the next morning and left me alone in our hotel room with no breakfast, the television on and a mess of finished coffee on a side table. Half an hour after he’d gone, I heard a knock on the door.

  “Room service!” The person outside sounded like a Mexican trying to speak English.

  I knew it wasn’t right away. I hadn’t ordered any and I knew Baker well enough to know he would never have arranged a meal he himself wasn’t involved in for me. Caring for women in that way just wasn’t his style. I opened the door while still in my pyjamas and was not in the least surprised when I saw Ethel on the outside, fully-dressed and made up like she was going to a glamorous party, smiling at me with pink and gold sparkles shimmering around her eyes, with two gigantic plates of breakfast in her hands. “May I come in?”

  I let her. Turns out it did feel pretty good to have saxophones in your ears all the time, knowing someone was head over heels, crazy in love with you. It felt great to have breakfast arrive as a surprise too, brought right to your face without you having to cook it for yourself and at least one other person.