A Different Kind of Normal

  Basically: I curve. Heavy on the boobs, not small hips.

  And the dozen kids?

  With Ethan, that appeals.

  He is six foot four. He has a friendly smile, a gravelly, calm voice, and a reassuring manner. I think of how he looks at me through his glasses, with tenderness and indulgence, as if he cares about me. He reminds me of a hike through the Columbia Gorge when the leaves are on fire with color, hot cocoa in winter in an outdoor hot tub with snow all around, a day at the beach in spring, and kayaking on a river in summer. He reminds me of life and in any other situation, I would throw myself at that man, I would try to be gracious and elegant while throwing myself, but I’d still take a dare and do it.

  But I can’t.

  Ethan is Tate’s neurosurgeon. He is the best on the West Coast. He knows Tate’s history and he has operated on him three times. If we were to be involved, he could not be Tate’s doctor. He has cried with me several times over Tate.

  He might, possibly, be interested in me. Maybe I’m reading the signs wrong. I am desperate. Desperate people will see signs that are, in reality, not there.

  But sometimes when we’re in his office, we stare at each other. Even Tate has noticed and one time said, “Okay, you two, quit staring at each other or your eyes will pop out of your heads and roll on the floor and I’m not pickin’ ’em up.”

  Another time Tate said, “Should I leave and go find a scalpel to play with? Maybe I can open one of your patients’ brains. Do you mind, Dr. Robbins?”

  And finally, “I think I’ll go and flirt with Leena. I think she wants my body, physically speaking.”

  Leena is a nurse and sixty-five years old.

  One time Tate said to Ethan, “Doesn’t my mom look great today?”

  And, before he could think it through, Ethan said, “Gorgeous, as always. She’s sunshine.” Then he coughed, and blushed, and tore those brown eyes away, brown with a touch of cinnamon in them, and I felt myself heat up like a bonfire.

  Leena said to me one day, peering over her glasses, “You know, Ethan is single, Jaden. Funny thing, but your appointments are always scheduled for a full hour, dear. We call it Happy Ethan Hour around here because he’s always happy when you’re coming in.”

  See? There’s a possibility there. My normal, aggressive personality is all softened out around him. I don’t have a streak of temper or testiness in me. No black thoughts. Love and lust is floating around, turning me into a bumbling, cotton candy-ish, amiable . . . klutz.

  Three times now, I have actually stumbled getting up from my chair in front of him. Twice he had to catch me.

  I’ve run into an open door and into a closed door right in front of him. I’ve tripped and landed on my face. On my face. Repeatedly I’ve been talking and had to stop mid-sentence, flummoxed and flustered, because I looked into those soft, sexy eyes and couldn’t figure out what on earth I’d been talking about.

  And Ethan waits me out, nodding encouragingly, or he picks me up off the floor.

  Ethan is kind and funny with Tate during his appointment, fielding all of his questions about brains, neurosurgery, etc., and then we talk. When I finally relax into him our conversation runs all over the place. Sometimes Tate says, “I’m going to leave you two alone, keep it G-rated,” or, “Off I go, leaving for Tanzania, but you two won’t notice,” and he leaves and goes to chat with the nurses, and we ride that roller coaster of our conversation.

  We discuss current political messes, his brothers, my herb garden, my greenhouse, funny jokes, delicious bread at a bakery down the street, our favorite pies, where we want to visit in the world, the most bare and raw feelings and fears that I have, his grief over his mother’s death, the grief his father still feels for her, mountain biking, and my exotic tea collection.

  But we go no further, and we won’t.

  I can’t.

  I am in love with Ethan, but I will not jeopardize Tate’s medical care. If I am involved with Ethan, he cannot be involved with Tate.

  Tate must have the best. His condition has been too delicate, absolutely life-threatening several times, and I will not risk it.

  Ethan is the best.

  If I spend an hour getting ready for Tate’s appointments, and call my mother about what to wear, and change outfits multiple times after showing her, and whichever soap opera star she is in bed with on set, via Skype to get their opinion, too, so be it. And who cares if a couple of times I whipped off my shirt and skirt and put on another outfit in front of the assistant director, the lighting guy, and my mother’s sister on the show? They didn’t. They voted for outfit number eight, by the way, it was unanimous.

  My heart aches, I want to leap on Ethan, but I can’t.

  Tate cannot lose Ethan.

  No way.

  I puttered in my greenhouse that night.

  It’s actually not a typical greenhouse, it’s more of a long room attached to our barn with lots of windows that I’d had built years ago. There’s a woodstove for heat, electricity so I can listen to symphonies and rock music, a small refrigerator and stove, a table and chairs, and colorful pots full of herbs and flowers.

  I have a patio outside where for most of the year I set up a red and white flowered umbrella, a glass-topped table, and chairs and chaise lounges.

  My white twinkling lights are wrapped around the main wood posts and looped above in the rafters. Down the center aisle is an old wood table where I work on my plants, seedlings, flowers, and herbs. On top of the table is a long bench, where I have purple, blue, green, red, and yellow tin buckets for gardening supplies and other paraphernalia. Hanging from the rafters are five bright, Chinese paper lanterns I bought in San Francisco beside wicker baskets and upside-down dried roses and lavender.

  I have a wicker table with a glass top overlaid with a yellow and red flowered tablecloth and wicker chairs with red cushions. I have stacks of gardening books and magazines, journals to write in, and sketchbooks to draw in on white shelves. I have a collection of scented candles in cinnamon, pumpkin, strawberry, mocha, gingerbread, and vanilla. I keep a jar of red cinnamon Gummi Bears on a shelf.

  I love my tea collection and I love drinking tea in delicate teacups or ceramic mugs: Arabian herbal tea, Mature Woman’s estrogen tea, Animalistic green tea, Stars and Suns blue tea, River Water Magic white tea, Spirits and Witches magnetic tea, and the usual, chamomile, black tea, and mint teas.

  I have a collection of fun birdhouses nailed up to a wall, three African voodoo dolls from my mother, and a collection of spotted ceramic frogs that I’ve attached to a wood beam so it looks as if the frogs are hopping up the beam.

  Besides herbs and a bunch of the flowers the women in my family line grow, I also have, at one time or another during the year, oriental lilies, sunflowers, daisies, and tomatoes.

  With symphonies floating through, my hands in dirt, or drawing and writing, or cutting and combining herbs and spices on Grandma Violet’s crystal plates, or inhaling their scents, I can be quiet in my head. Some of the anger, anxiety, and seriousness in my life settles down into something pretty. I don’t have to try to control anything, or protect Tate, I can just be.

  Usually.

  I rinsed off my hands in the sink after planting twenty daffodil bulbs—I have an unusual fondness for their yellow flower faces—then made myself a cup of lemon tea.

  I cut up sage and marjoram with a knife and added a sprinkle of sea salt with shaking hands, fear making me feel sick. I used Faith’s silver spoon to create tiny piles.

  I lowered my face to the crystal plates and inhaled, hoping against hope, not wanting to smell that putrid, threatening, ominous scent.

  Yes, it was there. I smelled death.

  It was coming.

  Once again.

  Faith’s silver spoon clattered to the floor.

  I told my mother the next night over the phone about the death stench. I told Caden.

  Now we were all worried. What was the purpose of my telling them? I don’t k
now. I wanted them to be extra-careful, to watch the kids with eagle eyes, but we all knew there wasn’t a darn thing we could do about it.

  Nothing.

  Maybe I was wrong about the death.

  I knew I wasn’t.

  Tate and I used to live in the city. Initially we lived in an apartment near the medical school on top of the hill, when I was studying to become a nurse. When Tate was about two I saw the future in brutal TechniColor.

  There were too many people in the city, too many people shocked at Tate’s head, too many brutal comments. For example, “What the fuck is wrong with that kid’s head . . . did you see that . . . God, that is a dee-formity . . . he could be on a freak show . . .” Tate didn’t understand it all, but I did, and he would soon.

  I cried over the phone to my mother one day about taking Tate downtown to a park and how people pointed and stared and two kids started throwing sand at him in the sandbox. Tate had no idea why the kids were doing that. He sat and cried. It kept happening with other kids. They called him names, ran away from him when he wanted to play, hit his head, called him “big head.”

  My mom cried over the phone from her set in Hollywood. She had been in the middle of a hot love scene with a husband, it was Damien Rothschild, aka Tom Werner, at that time, but they had to adjust the lighting so she and Tom had time to talk to me from bed. “I curse them. I wish for vermin and snakes to invade their homes,” she sobbed. “I wish for warts to grow in strange places. Oh honey, I am sorry.”

  Tom yelled out, “Move here, sweets. We’re all weird in Hollywood. What about this crazy Botox faze? Lips out two inches. Cow lips! Monkey lips! Faces that do not move, as if they’re under lock and key. No one will look twice. You should see Joan Totts’s latest face-lift. Soon her boobs are gonna be on her cheeks. And what about the game show hosts? Tanned to a yellow-orange color, yellow-orange!”

  As soon as I was an RN, we moved back to Grandma Violet’s/ Faith’s/Mother’s home, where I lived during most of high school and everyone knew my family. Here, Tate was somewhat more protected. It was a small town, they would have seen him many times, and at least the shock would wear off. Plus, out of respect to my family, I had hoped that some of the most vicious teasing would at least be mitigated. We would only be thirty minutes from Dr. Cainley, his doctor until he was thirteen.

  “I’m glad you’re going to live here, Jaden,” my mother drawled, putting her designer glasses on top of her head as we stood on the lawn in front of London Gardens, the maple trees bordering the drive swaying, whispers of wind swirling through the fir trees. “The least I can do is make sure you’re not living in a hovel.”

  “My apartment is not a hovel.”

  My mother waved her manicured hand. “Any apartment without a view of the city is a hovel.”

  I laughed. My mother does an impressive impression of being a snob but she is so far from being a snob, it makes me laugh harder.

  “Any apartment without a doorman is a slum. . . .”

  I laughed again. I loved being with my mother.

  “Any apartment without limo service, a concierge, and maids is a disgrace.”

  “Hey!” Tate said, all of three years old and as darling as one can be. “Nana Bird! Let’s sing your favorite song from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “Mother! You taught him a song from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas?”

  “It is my favorite show.” She brought a hand to her chest, cleared her throat, and sang, “I like fancy, frilly things, high-heeled shoes and diamond rings—”

  And then my son, my three-year-old son, chimed in, “Well, I like beer and rodeos, detective books and dominoes, football games and Cheerios, and sneakin’ around with you.”

  My mother grabbed Tate’s hands and they swirled around the grass and sang the whole song together as I envisioned Dolly Parton in her whorehouse, wig on, rack up.

  When they were done, I hissed, “You have to be kidding, Mother, he’ll be singing about a whorehouse in his preschool class. I don’t think the teacher would want to hear about ‘ragtime bands, goin’ a round or two, dirty jokes, or laying down the law.’ ”

  “That would be fabulous!” She clapped her hands. “Who wants to sing that silly ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ or that old, downtrodden song about the drunken farmer and Bingo the dog? Come along and I’ll make you a mai tai, Tate.”

  “Mother!”

  She huffed at me. “I meant a virgin mai tai.” She ruffled Tate’s hair. He was resinging the Whorehouse song, this time shaking his hips and putting particular emphasis on the words, “Sneakin’ around with you!”

  “Do you know what ‘virgin’ means, Tate honey?” my mother asked.

  “It means untouched, Nana Bird!”

  “That’s my boy!” She high-fived him.

  “For God’s sake, Mom!”

  The next afternoon I reminded Tate of that day.

  He laughed, then snapped his fingers and said, “General Noggin and I have an idea. That’s gonna be my next blog post.”

  TATE’S AWESOME PIGSKIN BLOG

  When I was little my Nana Bird taught me all the words to “It’s A Little Bitty Pissant Country Place,” which is a song from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas with Dolly Parton.

  For Show-and-Share in kindergarten I put my hand straight up and said that I had something to share. That day I wore a cowboy vest and cowboy chaps my Nana Bird bought me, and I had a cowboy hat perched up on General Noggin that a real movie star had signed.

  So, to get you in the mood of this, think of Dolly Parton in a sexy red dress and that white hair piled on her head, shimmying down the stairs to see all her cowboy customers in her whorehouse.

  I sang the whole song: “It’s just a little bitty pissant country place, ain’t nothing much to see . . .”

  I sang really loud when the words, “no drinking allowed,” came up and when I called it a “piddly squatin’ ” place, I got on my knees. When the words, “one small thrill,” came up, I put my thumbs up and waved them around and shook my hips like my Nana Bird taught me. She also told me to shout, “There’s nothing dirty going,” as loud as I could, so I did.

  I am not kidding when I say that all the kids in the class clapped and hooted when I was done and I took off my cowboy hat and bowed and then I took out my silver toy cap gun and shot it in the air. That made all the kids scream and laugh and Carlton wet his pants.

  I could not understand why my teacher, Mrs. Pizchel, had this pinched expression, her mouth hanging open to her chest. She insisted on talking to Boss Mom after class, and I could tell she was all flustered up. All Boss Mom said when Mrs. Pizchel was done shaking her tail feathers was, “How did the song sound? Did Tate sing it on key?”

  Here’s a photo of a graph of thermodynamics.

  Here’s a photo of Dolly Parton.

  Here’s a photo of a three-story house I made from graham crackers, marshmallows, and toothpicks.

  When I returned home from work, the triplets were in my front yard skipping and scampering about. Caden, his own home down our country road a ways, was nowhere to be seen. I bent to give them all a hug and kiss.

  Hazel was dressed as a dragon, complete with a green tail and dragon head with a pink tongue.

  Heloise was dressed as a “cat mouse elephant.” She wore a cat tail, a mouse hat, and an elephant trunk.

  Harvey was wearing a banana outfit.

  “Hewwo, Aunt Jaden,” Heloise said, her voice muffled through the elephant trunk. “I want to eat, eat some cookies of yours.”

  “Aunt Jaden,” Hazel said, swirling her dragon tail. “I gotta poop.”

  “I a banana,” Harvey said, wiggling. “Want a bite of me?”

  “I can see that you’re a banana, Harvey. No, I don’t want a bite of you.”

  “V is bad,” Hazel said, her face scrunched in dismay.

  “She don’t like the letter V anymore,” Heloise said, helpfully pointing at Hazel.
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  “V is bad?” I asked Hazel.

  “Because V rhymes with pee,” Hazel said. “V pee.”

  “Yeah.” Harvey giggled. “V pee. I don’t like V pee. I like bananas.”

  “Pee pee,” Heloise said, patting her mouse ears and hopping. “Mouse pee.”

  “Does your daddy know you’re down here?” I tried not to laugh. Of course he didn’t know. The triplets are not allowed off Caden’s property to journey forth into the wild blue yonder alone.

  The three of them studied the ground, scuffed their feet. Hazel pulled on her pink dragon tongue, Heloise swung her cat tail. The banana picked a dandelion and held it up for me.

  I took the dandelion. I love the triplets. They cried for their mother, Marla, when she left them when they were two years old for weeks. They burst into tears and kept saying, “Mommy home? Mommy home?”

  Mommy Marla had had a breakdown. It was after the triplets had been sick, one right after the other, and she hadn’t been outside for three weeks.

  Marla cried often since the triplets were born and I couldn’t blame her. She had Damini and three babies, two of whom were colicky and would not stop crying for hours. I would help, in four-hour shifts. I had my job, too, and Tate, and I was ripped to the bone after leaving there. Parenting triplets is insane, that’s the only way to describe it. It’s insane.