A Different Kind of Normal

  If we win a couple more games, we’ll be in the state tournament, so the basketball pressure is a risin’.

  This is what I know:

  Yellowstone National Park should be duplicated and dropped in all fifty states. That should be a law. Man, it is awesome. Watching Old Faithful is like watching my mom’s temper, Witch Mavis, blow her top except that it’s water shooting out of an angry earth and not Boss Mom.

  I like Popsicles. I can fit four in my mouth at one time. See the photo below, taken by my buddy Baron, he’s the funniest guy you’ve ever met.

  I want the space shuttle to park in my backyard, then I can study it. Here is what is weird: There are billions of people in this world who have no toilet, no running water in their homes, and America has space shuttles. Why is that?

  Here is something else weird: We have universities all over the place, and in so many countries of the world people don’t even get a basic education. Girls can’t even go to school at all. Why is that? Why are some countries so much more advanced than others?

  It is possible to overspice chili. I think it’s funny when it happens. Last time my friends Milt and Anthony came over, I put extra chili powder in their chili and I thought their faces were gonna fall off. Here’s a photo of them. See how there’s smoke practically coming out of Milt’s elephant ears? Yeah, you have elephant ears, Milt. Didn’t your mother ever tell you?

  I like orchids. There. I said it. Call me a pansy if you want to, but it’s not going to change my orchid love. Speaking of pansies, they have faces and they are watching you. I’m not kidding. Pansies watch people.

  I want to meet an alien.

  I don’t want to meet rabid raccoons.

  Notice I didn’t write anything about the tournament?

  Maybe it’s because I’m too nervous.

  Maybe it’s because I don’t want to think about it.

  Or maybe it’s because I’m excited about it, but I don’t want it to take over my whole life. You know how some things can do that. They take over your whole life. Maybe it’s something you’re worried about. Something you’re angry, sad, excited, looking forward to, or freakin’ wigged out about, but it’s all you can think about and that ain’t never right. (Ha! Boss Mom, I used the word ain’t. You ain’t gonna like that.) Never. You gotta have a lot of things to think about.

  That’s why I’m thinking about asking Boss Mom to take me to get a dozen doughnuts and then I’ll eat them in one sitting and put a photo up.

  Here’s a picture of Boss Mom and me at the doughnut store along with my uncle Caden, the triplets, who are dressed as sharks, except for Heloise, who says she is a shark-gypsy and that’s why she has a scarf with gold coins wrapped around her shark outfit, and my cousin Damini. She took off her leg and put it in the middle of the table when we were eating. See? She put her chocolate doughnut on top of her own leg. She is weird. You are weird, Damini. . . . Keep your leg on!!

  Brooke was so frail, I thought she might physically crumble if pushed in the wrong direction. She looked older than her age, her green eyes the recipients of hundreds of memories that scraped the bottom dwellings of human existence.

  “I miss Dad,” I said one night at the kitchen table as we chopped potatoes for Pacific Ocean Perfect Clam Chowder, using our Grandma Violet’s mother’s recipe.

  “Me too. I can’t get him out of my head, ever. I can hardly live with it.”

  There was an odd tone to her stricken voice. “Brooke—”

  “I miss him. I ruined his life.” She chopped harder, the knife flying.

  “You didn’t ruin it—” But I knew that was only part true.

  “His daughter was an addict, Jaden. Chasing drugs, drunk, anxious, argumentative, sneaking out, screaming, lying . . . and then I ruined his life.”

  “He loved you, Brooke. He would be so proud of you now, sober, here, with Tate and me and Mom—”

  “And that makes it all the worse for me. He was so good and I was so bad.”

  She started crying again, and I didn’t press further. I put my arm around her shoulders as her tears fell into the potatoes. That’s all you can do sometimes, I think, put an arm around someone’s shoulders, close your mouth, and let them cry it out.

  The clam chowder was delicious that night, though salted with Brooke’s misery.

  There were sixteen teams in the state play-offs in our league. We would play in the gym of our local university.

  The first game we won by twenty-one points. Tate scored twenty-eight points. He was on fire.

  Many newspapers and news organizations were there, chronicling the kid with the big head. They called the house, wanted to talk to Tate and me, mostly Tate. They copied parts of his blog, especially where Tate wrote, “Having a big head gives my brain more room to grow,” and “My eyes are crooked, but they do have x-ray vision,” and, “The size of my head makes me seductive. It’s a pheromone scent that attracts women. Yeah, I think it’s a chick magnet.”

  TJ Hooks’s team, unfortunately, also won.

  The next game, the quarterfinals, we won by eighteen points. Tate scored twenty-four points.

  TJ Hooks’s team, again unfortunately, also won.

  Needless to say, our town was flipping out.

  The tournament was one of those turn-off-the-lights-if-you’rethe-last-to-leave sort of things. Main Street in Tillamina shut down. The week before the game all the stores had signs up. WE WILL CLOSE EARLY FOR THE STATE BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT DAYS. GO BOBCATS!

  The semifinal game was played on a weekday, in the afternoon, and both schools were busing their kids over, including their dance teams, bands, and cheerleaders. It was mobbed.

  Caden wore his ripped, muscled Mid Court Mob shirt. Damini wore a gold-sequined skirt, couture from my mother, with her Mid Court Mob shirt, and the triplets dressed as bobcats. Harvey had added goblin claws, Heloise was wearing a gold coin waist chain, and Hazel slung a holster around her waist with a blue toy gun. Ethan came and I hugged him. He kissed me a few times, and it reminded me of the day before under a pile of blankets in my bedroom with a fire in the fireplace....

  My mother flew in and wore a svelte black dress with an orange boa. Brooke wore a Mid Court Mob shirt like everyone else. People from our town who had known her years ago did a double take when they saw her, and then embraced her with smiles and laughter.

  “I was such a hellion, in endless trouble . . .” she said, and swallowed hard, pushing back her auburn hair. “But they’re being nice, as if none of that happened and they’re glad to see me.”

  “They are, but I have to warn you, sister, Martin Hooks may be lurking around spying.”

  “Yuck. I don’t want to see him.”

  “I don’t, either. I’m hoping his team is eliminated today by the team they’re playing.”

  Tate and his teammates and the other team came out to practice to hysterical cheers and yelling. It was so noisy we couldn’t hear our own screams so Ethan kissed me. I don’t know how the two are linked, they just are.

  We were playing North Plateau High School.

  The referees blew their whistles, and we were off and running. Tate started and we jumped ahead early. Tate made some incredible shots, including two hook shots, which sent our fans into a tizzy.

  The North Plateau students were well-behaved for a while, then a group of maybe twenty kids started chanting, “Martian man, Martian man, Martian man,” whenever Tate handled the ball.

  For a second Tate was distracted by them and missed a pass. The ball went to the other side. He missed two shots. Another pass he threw was intercepted. His game was off, and the coach pulled him. I could see Coach Boynton psyching him up, yelling some confidence into him, while Tate held his head in his hands, his teammates patting him on the back.

  Within minutes Tate was back in again, our crowd went wild, and the other fans started yelling, “Martian man, Martian man, Martian man.”

  I turned and started toward the aisle—as did Brooke—but my broth
er grabbed me around the waist, then he grabbed Damini, who had followed me saying, “Balls and tarnation, I’m gonna punch those assholes.”

  Turns out I didn’t need to do anything.

  A kid on the other team, whose name I later learned was Cormac, had the ball. When Cormac heard the chant, he stopped and put his hands in a T for time-out. The ref blew the whistle.

  Cormac turned to Tate and stuck his hand out to shake it. I could see Tate’s hesitation, because he didn’t know what was going on and the words “Martian man” were slamming around in his head, but he shook Cormac’s hand.

  Cormac took it one step further. He ran over to the announcers’ table, grabbed a microphone, and jumped on top of it.

  His side yelled and cheered for him, but Cormac shouted, “Shut your mouths, home boys.”

  When the whole gym was quiet, he said, and his voice was particularly deep, “You peoples over there, yeah, yous. The ones who are shoutin’ at Tate and saying bad things with you bad mouths. You shut you damn mouths or I’m gonna shut ’em for you, you got that?”

  Okay! That settled those kids right down.

  “Now you know whose my brothers are, they’re right there. Darrell, Michael, Ross, Harold. They came home from college to watch this game. Bros, you come out.”

  I watched as four huge men stood up right behind Cormac’s team on the bleachers. Huge.

  “You guys don’t stop sayin’ that smack about my friend, Tate, and my bros are gonna take care of yous, you got that? We gonna play a fair game. A fair game. Don’t make me comes after yous, and don’t make my brothers move.”

  Silence.

  “You hear me? You shut up and quit yellin’ that crap or I’m gonna turn you into crap. Got that?”

  The kids were frozen, but a few heads nodded. Cormac jumped off the announcers’ table. Later the whole thing hit YouTube. The girl who downloaded it included a picture of Tate, part of the game they were playing before Cormac jumped onto the announcers’ table, the fierce brothers, and Tate’s blog site at the end of it. There were 3,900 hits by the next day.

  The teams came back out, and Cormac slapped Tate on the back. I saw Tate wipe the tears off his face, touched by what Cormac did, and Cormac slapped him on the back again.

  The whistles blew, and we were off and running again.

  Cormac’s brothers took it upon themselves to stand at the front of the kid section for the rest of the game. Not one more rude thing was said about Tate.

  “Class,” Caden said, after leading three cheers in a row. “Those men are classy.”

  “Elegant family,” my mother said. “Mark my words, I’ll bet the mother wears designer heels.”

  The game went into double overtime. I could tell that Tate was exhausted. In the last three seconds, when we were down by one point, Baron lobbed Tate the ball. It was a Hail Mary pass and a Hail Mary basket. Tate shot from near to half court, over to the right, his right arm swinging.

  The clock wound down, three . . . two . . . the ball was in the air, my mother grabbed my hand, Brooke gasped, the ball arched, spun, spun, spun . . .

  Swoosh!

  Right through the net.

  We descended into chaos.

  Our side cheered so hard I thought the roof might cave.

  The kids rushed the court.

  The team parents cried.

  The cameramen and reporters joined the jumping mob in the middle of the court.

  Before we could stop them, Damini and the triplets scooted their way down the bleachers, too. The other kids recognized the triplets and pushed them toward Tate, along with Damini. The boys put the triplets on their shoulders and a couple of them held Damini up, too.

  There was my son, arms up, smile a mile wide, his teammates cheering, and right by him was Damini with her arm around Tate, her prosthetic leg out, not hidden at all by her gold-sequined skirt because, as she always told me, “why hide what lets me walk?” and the triplets, dressed as strange bobcats, claws in the air.

  We were in the finals for the Class 4A state title.

  Unfortunately, regrettably, we were playing TJ Hooks’s team. I felt a frisson of fear dance up and down my back, leaping from rib to rib.

  “I don’t feel settled about this,” Caden said. “I feel unsettled.”

  “The air is pierced with Martin’s odiousness,” my mother said. “I wish he would explode.”

  The games were usually back-to-back, but we had a week’s break because the night of our last game, a whole bunch of pipes burst after being frozen and the mess flooded the gym.

  Tate practiced relentlessly, with his team and alone.

  As my mother gushed, “I am so thrilled I can hardly stand it! My bones are quivering with glee!”

  My bones were quivering with glee, too. And guilt. I wish I’d let him play before this.

  Ethan agreed that his bones were also quivering with glee. “Gleeful bones,” he said, then kissed me silly. “Let’s get our gleeful bones naked together in bed.”

  Caden’s family came over to visit after Brooke arrived.

  Caden cried when he saw Brooke, transformed to a shy slip of a woman now, but he was protective, encouraging, and brought her a bouquet of lilies in a long, rectangular glass vase, tulips between them. “So glad you’re back, Brooke, so glad you’re back. You feeling better now?”

  She assured him she was. She took him outside for a walk through our fir trees that first visit. I knew she was apologizing to him, and when they came back in, they’d both been crying.

  “Come and work for me in my flower shop, Brooke. We can make flower arrangements in the shapes of sports cars, dogs, elephants, you name it, we do it.”

  Brooke hugged him. She hugged Damini, too, who said, “It’s great to finally meet you. You’ve been through a bad time and me, too. Look, I lost a leg because of it.”

  The triplets bopped around in costumes. This time there was an alligator, a space alien, and a George W. Bush. She hugged them, too.

  Tate was getting to know Brooke day by day.

  They played chess together, she lost, they walked on the property. She spent hours in his experiment room. She tossed Skittles into his mouth and tried to balance fruit on her head. She baked with him, treats, taco soup, and breads.

  At one point Tate said, “I’ve missed you, Brooke.”

  Brooke cried.

  He patted her back.

  “You sure have a lot of tears in you, Brooke. Do you think you’re ever gonna run out?”

  “No,” she whispered. “No.”

  “Okay. Glad I know. I’ll make us popcorn. That daredevil show is on TV again. Do you want to watch it with me?”

  They made meatballs while they watched the show, laughing the whole time.

  I was beginning to breathe easier. I didn’t want to let myself like having Brooke around again, but I did. She was funny and fun. She is the wittiest person I know. She is really deep because she’s been through traumatizing experiences that bring on wisdom, perspective, compassion.

  I started to dare to hope that maybe this time she could stay clean.

  18

  On my drive home from work, I stopped my car across the street from the Fischerson house, then climbed out and explored, ignoring the freezing rain.

  Later, after a dinner of butternut squash soup, chicken cordon bleu, and vanilla ice cream with chocolate sprinkles, all of which Tate and Brooke helped me make, I grabbed a sketchbook and took it out to the greenhouse. Tate did his homework for his online advanced calculus class next to me, while I drew pages and pages of plans for the interior of my imaginary tea/herb/spice/sandwich/dessert shop.

  I thought of the patients I’d had over the years. I still missed some of them.

  For example, Mrs. Grosell, who was only fifty, who said that she felt blessed to have had fifty years. “Many people don’t even get close to what I’ve had.”

  Dale Hu, who taught me how to juggle. Even the day before he died, he was intent on me gaining this sk
ill. I still juggle apples and oranges now and then and think of him.

  Sergeant Chen Kim, who had Lou Gehrig’s disease and who had loved to cook. I would go to his house and cook in front of him. He loved it.

  They all died quietly, no special endings, but I had made them comfortable.

  The losses, though, for some reason, have all of a sudden added up to too much for me. Too much.

  I grabbed a green colored pencil and added a tree to the outside of my shop, then drew white lights over it. I love white lights in trees.

  Death had exhausted me. It was running me down.

  I stared at my plans and laughed as a bucket of rain pelted the windows.

  The laugh felt freeing.

  “What is it, Boss Mom?”

  I showed Tate the plans.

  He nodded and smiled. “That’s sick it’s so cool.”

  I hugged him tight.

  TATE’S AWESOME PIGSKIN BLOG

  We’re in the finals.

  Come, my peeps.

  Come.

  Ethan and I became engaged that Sunday after hiking around our property through a light snow, the snowflakes twirling around, white magic landing on our hats.

  He stopped, pulled me into his arms, kissed me silly, and said, “Jaden, will you marry me?”

  “Marry you?” A rush of trippy euphoria sped through my body. “But . . . you . . . we . . . it’s not been long. . . .”

  “It’s been years.”

  “But once you get to know me more, you might not like me. . . .”