A Different Kind of Normal

  I wanted to take off his glasses, his white doctor’s coat, and the blue shirt he wore beneath it. I wanted to rip off that belt, yank down his underwear, and I wanted to—

  “Mom!”

  I startled, pulling my eyes from Ethan to Tate. Tate opened his eyes super-wide at me as in, Mom! Hello? Quit staring! “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Uh . . . oh . . . uh . . .” I could feel a steamin’ red flush flying up my cheeks.

  “What I said was I wanted to go with Dr. Robbins to the research lab again at the hospital this Saturday, and can you drive me up there?”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” I tried to stamp out my graphic sexual thoughts. “Thank you.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” Ethan said.

  I swallowed what felt like a giant boulder in my throat. Can your throat create boulders that you choke on when utterly transfixed by the sexiness of a doctor not three feet away?

  “Good,” I said. I closed my mouth, embarrassed. Why had “good” flown out of my mouth?

  “Good.” Ethan smiled at me, then he dropped his head to study his chart and coughed.

  “Good,” I said.

  “Good,” he said.

  “And a goody-goody-two-shoes to both of you,” Tate sang out. “I’m gonna go say hi to Dr. Sheila and Dr. Craig, and my favorite, Nurse Leena, the object of my rampant desires.” Tate wriggled his eyebrows at us, then ambled out. “Hey, Nurse Leena! Watch out, seductress, I am coming to prove to you that my love is enduring, passionate, bold, and . . . peppery.”

  I heard people in the office laugh before the door shut. Someone called out, “And there he is, Tate Bruxelle, resident Romeo.”

  “Peppery love?” Leena laughed. She has a booming laugh. “I love it. Add some salt and we have salt and pepper. . . .”

  I stood up. “I should go, too, I know you’re busy.”

  Ethan stood up. We were then about two feet away from each other. Two feet. I could take two steps and be eye to nipple with him. His nipple. That’s about where my eyes come to. If I touched those nipples, what would happen?

  “Oh no, not busy, Jaden. Please sit down. Thank you. How’s your greenhouse?”

  Ha. One of my favorite topics. We talked on that.

  Then I said, “Tell me about your last kayak ride.”

  And boom. Off and sailing.

  He said, “How’s your work going?”

  As usual. I was helping people die peacefully. Some cases harder than others.

  I promised to bring him some herbs.

  He brightened up and said, “I’d appreciate that.”

  And all the while I wanted to kiss him. I fought an overwhelming impulse to leap up and hug him around the waist with my legs.

  I finally stood up to leave, not wanting to overstay a welcome. I turned to open the door, he moved to open it for me, and he ran into me. We both paused.

  My back was to his front, not touching, but so close I could feel the heat between us as if my body embers were on fire. I heard him take a deep inhale of breath. I exhaled and closed my eyes.

  “Jaden . . .”

  “Ethan . . .”

  “I . . .”

  “I . . .”

  And another pause.

  “Yes?” I said, nervous and pained.

  “You’re the mother of my patient. And I could not be his doctor if you and I were . . . together.” I felt him take a deep breath. “It’s unethical. . . .”

  “I know.” My voice cracked. It went along with my heart. “I would never want to lose you as Tate’s doctor. I can’t. We can’t.”

  Silence. And there it was. Out in the open.

  “But, Jaden . . .”

  There were no “buts.” “I have to do what’s best for Tate.”

  “There are other highly skilled doctors.”

  I understood what he was saying. My whole body became stiff, and I clenched my teeth. I envisioned what could be. What could be between Ethan and me realistically, not just in my rambling imagination. I could be with him. Date. Sleep with him. Jump that tall and lanky body. Talk honestly way into the night as we ate popcorn. We could grow herbs in my greenhouse, fish in my drift boat, and play cards when we were old together. We could hobble around on canes, grandchildren frolicking around and about, a hundred of them.

  “I could call one of those highly skilled doctors,” Ethan said.

  “No.” My voice sharpened up, mother bear beginning to growl. “It has to be you.” It had to be. Ethan was the best pediatric neurosurgeon on the West Coast. He had even been written up in the paper and it was noted how other hospitals, larger and more prestigious hospitals, constantly tried to lure him away from Oregon.

  “I want you to be his doctor, Ethan.” I put my hands to my face to still the tears. Maybe to keep the sheer loneliness that had stalked me for so many years from spilling out, too. “At any time Tate could have an emergency, a problem, and I can’t give you up. You’re the best doctor.”

  “I could introduce you to a talented, reputable doctor. You could grow to trust someone else—”

  “No. I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”

  Heavy, sad, breaking silence. I felt my eyes flood with tears as I stood there. I leaned back, or he leaned forward, I don’t know which. His arms went around my waist, and I dropped my hands around his arms and tilted my head back, my temple to his cheek. The heat had been growing and growing, but now it broke apart, to be replaced by iron-heavy hopelessness and sheer longing. Our tears mixed together. I felt his chest heave, my red hair a curtain.

  I wanted to be with Ethan. I daydreamed of him constantly, the daydreams bringing me both peace and anguish. I had done it for years. It wasn’t healthy, don’t daydream for what you can never have, but I hadn’t been able to help myself.

  “I’ll look forward to you bringing me some of your herbs again, Jaden.” His voice was tight, cracked, and he pulled me closer.

  I answered, my voice strangled. “I’ll bring them straight from my herb garden.”

  I turned and hugged him and he pulled me in, tight and warm, and I heard him sniffle and I knew he was dragging a hand over his eyes. I shuddered and I used my sleeve to wipe my eyes. I heard him sigh and I sighed, too. We held each other close, knowing that more closeness was not coming, then I pulled away and yanked myself together. I made sure the tears were gone, I put my shoulders back, my chin up, and a false smile on my face, as so many of us do.

  He held the door open.

  I walked through it.

  I did not look back.

  I lost a patient later that day after I dropped Tate off at school. I cried with the family. They ended up comforting me. That was unprofessional, but when I left, they hugged me again, thanking me profusely. I heard one of the aunts say, “Jaden Bruxelle is an angel.” And the other aunt said, “She cared about Tish. I could see that so clearly.”

  I did care about Tish. She was a great woman with a naughty sense of humor.

  But I was crying for Ethan, too.

  Would the loneliness of him not being in my life ever, ever go away? Would I always feel hollow? Would I always feel alone? What if he married someone else?

  I shut down on those thoughts as I had a hundred times. It didn’t do to think about them. What was the point?

  Tate needed him, that was all I needed to know.

  And I love Tate.

  He’s my son.

  My beautiful, funny, perfect son.

  TATE’S AWESOME PIGSKIN BLOG

  Here’s a photo of Milt. Nice Mohawk, Milt!

  Milt hates snakes.

  Here’s a photo of a copperhead and an Indian king cobra. As you can see, I Photoshopped the photo and added a pink bow and bra to the copperhead and a baseball hat and cigarette to the king cobra.

  Anyhow, I went to about five stores and bought a whole bunch of different-colored plastic snakes, different sizes, too, and then Anthony, his twin brother, and I stuffed them in Milt’s locker at school.

  We tell everybo
dy what we’ve done so they’re all waiting and Milt opens up his locker and all these snakes fall out and he screamed!!! He sounded like a car when the fan belt’s all dried up. Anyhow, he jumps back, drops his books, turns, screams this creepy scream again, and runs and actually bashes himself face-first into a door.

  He gets all twisted up, falls on the ground, and yells, “Shit! What the hell?!” and scrambles away again.

  It was freaking funny. I thought we were all gonna die laughing.

  When he knows I’m the snake worshipper Milt starts running after me around the school, but he can’t catch up.

  We gave all the snakes away and all day long dudes and dudettes were wearing snakes. Patty put one through her ponytail and Devon attached his snake to his baseball hat, and another girl, Marnie, put the snake in her cleavage. She said that now she had “snakey boobs.” Even the teachers wore their snakes.

  Here are some photos.

  Here’s a photo of Milt and Anthony after the snake attack at the locker. Milt won’t wear a snake. That’s Anthony next to him with a whole bunch of snakes all over his body. Duh. They’re twins.

  Here’s a question: What’s the funniest thing that ever happened to you?

  One more note: Don’t ever try to mess with nitroglycerin. It is way unstable and it can cause an explosion. It’s melting point is 13.5 degrees Celsius and it decomposes at 50 to 60 degrees Celsius. This is the formula C3H5N3O9 and its explosive velocity is 7700 m/s. That’s bad and I learned it the hard way.

  That evening Tate and I made toasted cheese, basil, honey, and tomato sandwiches and watched my mother’s soap opera, Foster’s Village, off the DVR. We watched her nightly, together. If we missed a couple, we waited until the weekend and watched it with her.

  This last show was absolutely gripping. She’d told us about it weeks ago. “It’s goose bump scary. This actor who’s playing the psychopath lights my fear on fire. I told him, ‘Joshi, you frighten my soul to pieces!’ and he grabbed me and threw me over his shoulder and I thought I was going to have a heart attack! It was sensual!”

  The show was actually a white-knuckler, though I know that may be hard to believe about a soap opera. I kept fiddling with my cross, heart, and star charms. My mother had been kidnapped out of her home, in the middle of the night, and was locked in a windowless room, a bunker underground, the walls dripping with leaking water, held there by Joshi, the psychopath.

  She was right about Joshi, too. Tall, blond, light eyes. Controlling. Freaky. The man radiated danger. I found myself clutching Tate’s hand.

  Honestly, she gave the performance of her life, as did Joshi.

  On the show, she woke up, dazed, and for once she was not made up much. She tried to find a door, and couldn’t because there wasn’t one. No windows, either. There was a dirt floor, it was pitch-black, and she started panting, sweating, hysterically trying to scrape her way through with her nails. She whimpered in fear when she hit the walls and could find no opening. In the end she collapsed in a corner, huddled up, destroyed.

  I actually found myself forgetting to breathe and feeling teary-eyed for my mother’s calamitous state. Tate watched it and burst into tears.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay, Tate,” I said, hugging him. “We know it’s not real life. . . .”

  “I know, I know, I can’t help it! That’s Nana Bird!”

  Even the critics were impressed with her performance.

  I called her at her home in the Hollywood Hills after the show and put Tate and myself on speaker.

  “Mom, I’m still trembling! You scared me to death!”

  “Nana Bird,” Tate said. “I can’t watch it again until this part is over. It’s gonna give me freakin’ nightmares. I’m not gonna be able to sleep. I might even have to drag out Pansy.” Pansy was a huge purple rhino that my mom had given him when he was three. He used to sleep on top of it.

  “I wasn’t completely acting. Joshi has a criminal record from years past, but his sexual energy was overpowering. Overpowering! He was mouthwatering.”

  Because of that overpowering sexual energy my mother probably flirted with him, but it meant nothing. Her flirting always means nothing. I don’t believe there has been a man in her life since my father died. I am not sure there ever will be again.

  As usual, she slides over her own tragedies with wry humor, ribald jokes, and brassy confidence.

  She will never get over losing my dad. It isn’t going to happen.

  I don’t think I’ll ever get over not having Ethan. It isn’t going to happen. He was it for me. I know it and we will not be together. I am not being melodramatic, I am being honest. He was the one. It’s not like I’m going to whine or give in to depression or curl up in a ball or not move forward in my life, but it will be without him.

  I try not to let that breath-sucking truth overtake me until late at night, when I can jam my head into a pillow and muffle my sad sounds.

  “Boss Mom. This week is my Olympic week. Four nights of tryouts,” Tate told me early the next morning. I handed him his two lunch sacks. He eats an enormous amount of food because, he says, he has to feed “my second set of brains.” He peered in to make sure I’d included La La Lemon Meringue Cookies with vanilla frosting that he inhales by the dozen.

  “I know, buddy. Strip that basketball away from your opponent, play defense so hard the other players know they’re coming up against a steel robot, and shoot the heck out of the ball.” I smiled tightly, my nerves clanging, and pushed my hair out of my eyes. My fingers brushed the crystals he’d given me. “There. Do I sound like a supportive mother now? I’m doing my best.”

  “Yeah, you do.” He tossed a handful of Cheerios up and caught three of them, then picked the ones off the floor he missed and ate them. “I really want to make it. I don’t want to spend the rest of the year by myself imagining another nine basketball players out on our sport coat.”

  “I think it’s hopeful, Tate.” More than hopeful. He was making three-pointers all the time. Surely he would make it?

  “I dunno. Lots of kids are trying out. I don’t have the defense thing down because I’ve only been playing with invisible people in my head and they mostly get out of my way. I have to work on my passing, too, and sometimes the other players steal the ball from me.”

  “But you can shoot, Tate, you can shoot.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I can shoot.” He nodded. He again threw a handful of Cheerios back up and caught a couple. The rest fell to the floor and he picked them up and ate them, too. “I might not make it. I might not be good enough.”

  “And I might decide to turn myself into an elephant.”

  He grinned. “And I might decide to turn myself into combustible chemicals, a super computer, or nuclear fusion.”

  “And I might decide to leave for Tanzania.”

  “And I might turn into an invisible wisp of gas, capable of slinking inside people’s brains and making a quick research study around the corpus collosum, cingulate sulcus, and temporal lobe.”

  “Out you and your brain go, Tate.”

  “Yep.” He put his dishes in the dishwasher, threw two more Cheerios up in the air, caught them, and turned to lope on out with his lunch sacks in his back pack. Whenever Tate left the house I felt a pang because I didn’t know how bad things might get for him out there. I could not predict what hurts people would fling at him, nor could I lock him in my home.

  “Tate.”

  He turned.

  “Good luck.”

  He loped back to me. “Yeah. Okay, Boss Mom. Thanks.” He gave me a hug, then flicked the crystals in my hair.

  I loved that kid.

  I was so scared he’d make the team.

  Arty Mossovsky is ninety-three years old.

  He has a giant-sized Saint Bernard named Boat. The Saint Bernard is ten years old, creaky and limping, and is always in Arty’s bedroom with him and his wife, Margaret, usually on the king-sized bed with them.

  Boat believes he is a human. He wear
s a pink collar and a tiny gold bell even though Boat is a boy dog.

  “I brought home a red collar and he refused to put it on. Bah!” Arty told me one day as he lay in bed, heart failure chasing him down. “I go back out and get him a green collar. Wouldn’t wear it, dumb dog. Bah.”

  “Stubborn dog,” Mrs. Mossovsky said. She was knitting a pink sweater for a three-year-old great-great-granddaughter named Margaret. Her fingers didn’t move nimbly anymore but the love was there.

  “That bad dog gives the word stubborn a new definition. What is he, a fashion model dog?” Mr. Mossovsky rasped out, struggling a bit for breath. “I go back out to the pet store again and I get him a pink collar with the jangly bell, that’s all they have left in his size. His neck is the size of a tree trunk. Tree trunk dog. I should have named him Tree Trunk!” He slapped a hand on the sheet.

  “Why did you name him Boat?” I asked.

  “Because his feet are so floppy they remind me of boats! Boating! And I got a hankering for boats. Had to go boating on Saturdays to get a break from the Mrs.” He pointed to his wife, next to him in bed, whom he adored.

  Mrs. Mossovsky leaned over slowly, her bones not working so quick anymore, and kissed Mr. Mossovsky on the cheek, her white curls soft. She is also on hospice care because she is also suffering from heart failure. No, it is not odd that they have the same thing. They are ninety-three. Hearts go.

  “The Mrs. has lush lips,” Arty told me. “See them? Always has. That’s why I married her when we were eighteen. I saw those lips and I said, ‘Margaret, I can’t live without those lush lips. Will you marry me?’ ”