A Different Kind of Normal

  He admitted his guilt with his two attorneys present, who took the rest of his money, and he spent five years in jail. I believe he is now in apartment management in Toronto.

  And there was a man named Mason. He did not mention an ex-wife for six months. He did not mention any wife. He did not mention their children. He did not mention that he was months behind in child support and alimony. I found out when his wife arrived at our table in a fancy steak house restaurant one night. Apparently her best friend had been sitting behind us and called her. Mason’s wife had not been able to get a hold of her husband for the money. She flipped our table over to make sure her point was made about the missing money. Our steaks went flying.

  I helped her dump water over Mason. She gave me a ride home. I do not date men who cheat their ex-wives and children.

  “You grabbed testicles infrequently,” my mother said, “and the testicles you chose were poor choices, wrinkled, slack, selfish testicles, no offense, divine daughter.”

  “None taken. That statement is true.”

  I gave up on dating, on men, for years. I was swamped in work and in Tate’s needs.

  Then I met Ethan.

  I tried a few dates after I met him, as Ethan was off-limits, but I felt lonely, alone, and deceptive on those dates because it wasn’t fair to the men I was with. I was not looking for anyone else. One man even said to me, “You’re not into this, are you?”

  He was right.

  I quit dating altogether and sank into my daydreams of Ethan and me.

  “I wish for you a real man, Jaden,” my mother said. “A real man with real testicles.”

  “I found him, but I can’t have him.”

  My mother became quiet and contemplative, her face still, then she sniffled. “I know I’ve said this before, honey, but I recognize, we all recognize, that your sacrifices have been enormous.”

  I blew that off, waving my hand in the air. “I have Tate, Mom, it’s all worth it.”

  “I know, sweetheart. But you gave up your twenties, dating, a husband, and you’ve dealt with all of Tate’s medical emergencies.. . .”

  “Let’s not talk about it, Mom. You help me all the time. You offered to raise Tate in Hollywood with you, and I refused to let you take him and I refused to go and live with you. We’ve raised him together.”

  “You’re an outstanding mother.” She sniffled again.

  “Thanks, Mom. You’re an outstanding Nana Bird.”

  She used a tissue on her nose and tried to pull herself together. “I’m going to put a spell out there for some testicles for you.”

  “You do that. I don’t believe in your spells.”

  “Yes, you do,” said the woman who is rational in all else.

  My mother did not chase testicles, either, despite her flirty, outrageous ways, which were mostly an act. One time she told me, late at night, something I’d always known by her actions: “I live my life for you, Brooke, Caden, and the grandkids. Our family, and honoring your father’s life, is what’s important to me.”

  I reached a hand out for my mother that afternoon on the porch with our peppermint tea. She held it and said, in all seriousness, nothing about flying testicles at all, “You have blessed my life, Jaden, as you blessed your father’s life. Don’t ever forget that we love you.”

  “I love you, too, Mom.”

  Our hands stayed together for a long time.

  “Dr. Robbins, what exactly is your opinion on participating in medical trials, not only from a doctor’s perspective, but from a moral and ethical perspective, too?” Tate asked Ethan. “Especially since most trials don’t work, the doctors are only trying something new . . .”

  “My opinion is that . . .”

  And those two were off and running in Ethan’s office. I tried extremely hard not to stare at Ethan and pant with lust.

  When they were done and I was trying to erase a graphic sex scene in my greenhouse with Ethan from my mind, Tate said, “What are you going to do this weekend, study the newest research on Alzheimer’s in a medical magazine or count the taste buds on your tongue? I’m going to opt for the taste buds.”

  “Counting the taste buds sounds intriguing, Tate, thank you for the idea, but I’m going river rafting this weekend.”

  “Oh, that sounds fun,” I blurted. “I’d been river rafting twice and I loved it.”

  “What rapid class?” Tate asked.

  “III and IV.”

  “Man. I would love to do that.”

  “Come then,” Ethan said, pushing his glasses to the top of his head and leaning toward us.

  Those two words dropped into the room like a bomb . . . a bomb filled with flowers and chocolate candy and kisses in a river. I quivered.

  “Really?” Tate bopped in his chair. “We can come?”

  “No, no, Tate, I’m sure that we can’t. Dr. Robbins has plans, probably with other people, with rafts and . . . and . . . plans with paddles and rows, the river—”

  Tate crossed his eyes at me as in, Get it together, Mom.

  “Actually, it’s only one other person—” Ethan said.

  Instantly I could feel the green and jealous devil in me surface. Was the one other person a woman? A female? With a female’s anatomy?

  “And . . .” Ethan’s gaze traveled from me to Tate, a surprised, but delighted expression on his face, as if he couldn’t believe he’d invited us, but he was glad that he did. “I would love it if you two came.”

  “Man, we’re there, right, Boss Mom? Whoeee!” Tate jumped onto his chair, then pretended to row the raft. “I’m gonna be a younger Meriwether Lewis and William Clark except”—he fisted his hand—“my mom’s gonna make the best club sandwiches you ever had. She puts on the smoked turkey, honeyed ham, roast beef, tomatoes, onions, and lettuce and vinegar and oil, but then she makes up this special warmed-up sauce with crumbled blue cheese, and she’ll make cinnamon rolls with extra white sugar frosting, that are so bang-up amazing you’ll cry, same as I do when I eat ’em, right, Boss Mom?”

  “No, I’m sure we can’t go . . .” But then, Ethan, tasty Ethan, I glanced at him, and he smiled at me, hopeful, and I couldn’t break away. Another graphic image: Ethan in a raft naked. Me on top. I blushed.

  “Here we go again. The staring contest between Boss Mom and Dr. Robbins.” Tate groaned. “This’ll take awhile, I can tell. . . .”

  “It’s not a staring contest,” Ethan said. “I . . . uh . . . I was simply waiting . . . waiting for your mom’s . . . for your mom to smile . . . I mean”—he shook his head, flustered—“I was waiting for your mom to say yes to rowing. . . .”

  I smiled at Ethan. Ethan smiled back. We smiled and smiled. Making love on a raft floating down a river . . . my butt could get sunburned . . . I blushed.

  “Okay, I can see where this is going,” Tate said, sighing dramatically, and jumping off the chair. “I’m going out to hit on Leena. She wants me, flesh and bone, I can tell. And we’ll see you rafting on Saturday, Dr. Robbins. Who-hoo? Can you hear me, Dr. Robbins?” He leaned down to speak straight into Ethan’s ear. “We’ll see you Saturday. Thanks, dude.” Ethan jumped, then Tate turned to me. “When you two are out of your staring contest, make sure you ask him where we’re supposed to meet.”

  He turned to go. “Nurse Leena,” Tate shouted. “You sexy thing, you! Watch out, I’m comin’ for ya!” I heard the other nurses laugh and Tate growled, “Don’t say no to me, Leena, you seductive enchantress woman, I know you’ve been dreaming about me for years. . . .”

  I could hear Leena’s response—please remember she is sixty-five years old—“Don’t tempt me, Tate Bruxelle, it’s always been hard for me to say no to a looker!”

  “Wowza!” Tate yodeled. “Bring it on, Leena, fair lady! General Noggin and I won’t take no for an answer.”

  The door shut and I focused on the pen in my hand. I fiddled with it, then in my fiddling it popped out of my hand and skidded across the floor. Ethan picked it up and handed it to me. Our f
ingers touched, I dropped the pen again, and we went through the whole thing again.

  “How about it, Jaden?”

  “Are you sure?” I sucked in my breath and tried to hide my primal joy panting.

  “Absolutely.”

  I smiled at him.

  He smiled back.

  “I would love you . . .” He coughed, blushed. “I meant, I would love for you to come with us.”

  “I would love to come, too.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Yes, I’d love to come.”

  “Good.”

  “Good.”

  We stared at each other again, smiling, and I felt passion swirling in and around my insides....

  “Beautiful,” he said, then blushed again.

  I thought of him and me naked in the raft. Would we need life jackets?

  I blushed back. “Yes. Beautiful.”

  I stood up and knocked over my chair.

  Tate would not speak to me at breakfast after yet another argument about basketball the night before.

  Tryouts were coming up, kids were practicing all the time after school. He was missing out, he couldn’t improve, this was his last chance....

  He slammed out of the house and walked to school in the rain, the fall leaves from Faith’s maple trees swirling around him, paprika red, mustard yellow, bay leaf green.

  I opened the door and yelled, “I’ll drive you! Tate, wait!”

  He sprinted down the street.

  “Tate!”

  He ignored me.

  I couldn’t let him play.

  It is not fun being a parent all the time. But sometimes you have to say no.

  No, that was my answer. I was not being overprotective.

  No.

  He could get hurt.

  No.

  It had to be no.

  I had not forgotten that Dirk was coming after me for “murdering” his father.

  On a cold Thursday, the leaves dropping off the trees in the skittering wind, the rain incessant and heavy, I received a call from Sydney.

  “I’ve set up a meeting. You and I, the doctors who saw Mr. Hassells, Senior, administrators, Dirk Hassells, etc. We’ll come in with the information we have, the diagnosis, prognosis, treatments, the spread of his disease, the scans, blood tests, blah blah blah, and present it to Dirk. It’s the usual threats of a lawsuit, cold nights in jail, banishment to medical Siberia, baloney baloney baloney, and years of hellacious torture. He’s a charmer.”

  “He’s a greedy, narcissistic fool.”

  “And a man who believes he’s a jilted lover. You and your rejection of him pissed him off. The other day he said he thought you were ‘sexually cold,’ and ‘unaccommodating,’ and ‘not friendly enough’ to him, and ‘were you gay?’ ”

  “That’s dense, dark, disturbing Dirk.” I could feel my heart speed up with stress.

  “I told the attorney. She’ll annihilate him with it if she has to. What was his relationship with his father again?”

  “They had a personality conflict because, as Mr. Hassells senior said, ‘My son has a superiority complex about the size of Texas. He has an exaggerated sense of self-worth and self-confidence that is not grounded in true accomplishments, and he is a slut.’ He was saddened, but not surprised, by his son’s lack of care for him at the end.”

  “Got it.” She let the silence hang between us for a moment. “What is it, Jaden?”

  “I did all I could, all that medicine could do, to make Mr. Hassells comfortable, as I do for all my patients, and then Dirk, a sick, obsessed man, can ruin my reputation and put me under the stress of a lawsuit because I didn’t sleep with him. It’s not right, and it pisses me off.” Oh Witch Mavis, relax . . .

  “It pisses me off, too. You’re a talented nurse, don’t you forget it. Be tough here. We’ll get rid of this problem soon and knock this goon off his white horse.”

  In my greenhouse late that night, when Tate was in his experiment room watching a video on a complicated brain operation, I puttered about and thought about being accused of murder. I was definitely in a “shipwreck time of life” with work, as Faith and Grace would say.

  Grandma Violet told Brooke and me the “shipwreck time of life” story when we were little girls visiting her one cold winter day, the snow filling the fields. We were sitting at the wooden table that Faith’s husband, Jack, built, and she told us that Faith and Grace’s ship hit a number of storms in the Atlantic Ocean from England to America.

  “Their boat flopped around as if it were no more than a bottle of rum passed back and forth in Satan’s hands. The girls thought their passage was punishment from God himself, complete with the devil cackling and wreaking havoc, throwing lightning strikes and pelting thunderbolts from a churning, turbulent black sky. They thought the ship would be wrecked and they would drown.”

  Grandma Violet was an excellent storyteller. She shook her curly hair, auburn mixed with white, her fingers busy with her herbs. “There wasn’t enough food, what there was was soon putrid, and there were bugs, lice, rats, diseases galore, and no sanitation for months. These girls had come from wealth, title, and privilege. They were silly, naughty, and they snuck out all the time at night. They liked the men. They liked their fancy dresses, flowered hats, whiskey in their tea, and fashionable shoes.

  “They had no idea how to deal with the suffering they found on board, but finally they bucked up. They started taking care of the sick and dying, and they used their spells to heal, even though they thought the seasickness was going to kill them. They used their cross, heart, and star charms, like you two and your mother and I wear, and their thimble, white lace handkerchief, needle, the gold timepiece, and the book with the black cover, although they never used them when other people were around. They didn’t need to be accused of being witches on a ship. They might have been thrown over.”

  She poured paprika and cloves, one layer upon another, into a clear bottle. “These were all things that Rosemary’s (who became Grace)’s frantic mother hurriedly packed for the girls in a velvet satchel before throwing them up on horses with their brothers to gallop to the dock and away from that torch-wielding, witch-hunting mob. Grace’s father threw in money that the girls later used to set up their ladies’ shop in South Carolina.”

  Grandma Violet started sorting other herbs and spices into bottles, mixing them now and then. “Some of the ill people Faith and Grace spelled on that ship died, but a number lived and said that in their delusions, in the midst of their fevers, they had seen Faith and Grace blocking the doors of heaven. One man said it was the blue-eyed and green-eyed twins who saved him, he thought they were sisters, not cousins, which was what Faith and Grace told everyone.”

  “But they made it?” I asked Grandma Violet.

  She nodded, said a quick chant, then started putting corks on the bottles of spices she’d been working with. “They made it to South Carolina, but whenever Faith and Grace had a bad time in their lives, they said it was a ‘shipwreck time of life,’ and that’s what all we women call the bad times, too.”

  I nodded solemnly.

  Brooke said, “It’s our saying, then.”

  “That’s right. Don’t you forget the stories about Faith and Grace now, Jaden and Brooke. When you have children, you pass it down to them.”

  “Okay, Grandma Violet. I’ll do it,” I said. “The stories are stuck like glue up in my head now.”

  “Me, too, Grandma Violet. I’ll tell all my twelve kids,” Brooke said. “We won’t forget.”

  She gave us a hug, then we baked banana nut muffins together as the snow piled up.

  I looked out the greenhouse windows at Faith’s home, Grandma Violet’s home, my mother’s home, my home, and ate six red cinnamon Gummi Bears, four lemon drops, blasted the J.Geils Band song, “My Angel Is a Centerfold,” and tried not to throw things.

  This was definitely a shipwreck time of life, and though Faith and Grace’s shipwreck time was far, far worse than mine, I still had
my own rat-infested murder-ship with Dirk’s accusations swirling around.

  I kept puttering between my paper whites and my beefsteak and brandy wine heirloom tomatoes in my greenhouse, my anger simmering, as I thought about being a hospice nurse.

  Maybe I needed to do something different.

  Perhaps I needed fewer tears in my life.

  What would I do if I wasn’t a hospice nurse?

  What did I want to do?

  I thought of Ethan. Yep. Wouldn’t mind doing things with him for the next sixty years. I paused to think out a love scene with him involving a log cabin in the woods with a kitchen stocked with gourmet food, goddess fruit teas, and herbs and spices for extra tastiness. He told me he loved me in front of a roaring fire, we fed each other red cinnamon Gummi Bears, etc., etc.

  When I was done, I thought about who and what I loved. I loved Tate, my mom, Caden and his kids, Brooke, despite it all, and Ethan. I loved my nurse friends.

  I loved herbs and spices.

  I loved cooking and baking because of the hours and hours I cooked with Grandma Violet, using family recipes so old we had to laminate the crinkly paper in order to save them.

  I loved tea and books.

  Tate was getting older, he would be in college soon. I could do something else.

  Could I start all over? Did I want to?

  Why not? Why could I not start over?

  Maybe I needed to start thinking about a new dream for my life.

  One where I would never be accused of being a murderer.

  Before I left that night, I mixed up parsley, paprika, and rosemary. I passed the flakes of parsley back and forth in my hands. I rubbed the paprika between my fingers and chopped up rosemary leaves. I used Faith’s silver spoon to add a bit of that and a touch of this to a pile of spices.

  I gritted my teeth, my heart palpitating, then lowered my face to the crystal plate and inhaled.

  Death.

  I quickly mixed up mint, bay leaves, and cumin.