Entering Normal by Anne Leclaire Page A

confrontation, his capacity for sustained rage, has long ago been exhausted.
    THE HOUSE HAS AN EMPTY FEEL.
    â€œRose?” he yells as he enters. “Rosie?”
    He checks the kitchen and then upstairs. She isn’t in their bedroom. Todd’s door is closed, and as he approaches he hopes to hell she isn’t in there. He hasn’t found her in there in months, and he clings to this as a sign she is getting better. He opens the door, smells stale air. Years ago the last traces of Todd’s sweat and shaving lotion evaporated, but everything else is the same. Over on the bureau, Rose has set up a little arrangement of some of his things, junk for the most part: A ceramic tiger he made in day camp, broken and repaired at least twice—even from the door Ned can see a thin line of glue at the tail. Two framed snapshots, one of him at six and one at fifteen. His watch, a cheap blood-encrusted Timex they stripped from his wrist in the emergency room. (Rose kept it set to the correct time for months until the battery ran down.). A scrap of wrinkled paper on which is scribbled a note telling them he will be late for dinner. A couple of years ago, Rose added a votive candle. It looks like some kind of shrine, for Christ’s sake. Sick.
    If Ned has his way, they would turn the room into a den, should have done it a long time ago. A place where he can do paperwork for the station instead of the cramped space he now uses where he can never find anything. Tax time is a nightmare. Naturally, Rose won’t hear of it. Where is she anyway? “Rose?” he calls again.
    He’s nervous when he doesn’t know where she is. He’s already lost sight of too much of her. It’s as if Rose is a balloon lost in clouds overhead, and if he doesn’t keep her tethered, she’ll float completely off, be gone. He believes if he can just keep hold of the string, the other part will come back.
    He goes out to the hall. From the upstairs window, he takes in the reassuring sight of laundry blowing on the line. Over in the yard at the Montgomery place, he sees two figures, hears, then through the window, the thump of rock music. Bad enough he’s got to put up with Ty’s stuff at the station. Now it looks like he won’t get peace in his own backyard.
    The Gates girl moved in last month. No husband on the scene, just her and the kid, although in Ned’s eyes, she isn’t much more than a kid herself. Personally he thinks she’s a fruitcake: not evil, just no good sense. She’s as thin as oil slick—looks like one stiff breeze would knock her over—and she runs around in bare feet and flashy skirts that either swing around her ankles or cut high across her thighs. No middle ground with that one.
    A couple of weeks ago she stopped by the station to use the pay phone and fuel that old Buick she drives, and it wasn’t two minutes before she had Tyrone’s tongue hanging near his knees. The mechanic wasn’t much good for the next half hour. It makes Ned nervous her being next door, so close to Rose.
    Before the Gates kid moved over there, Ned had high hopes for the Montgomery place. He fantasized that a couple about his and Rose’s age would move in. A nice childless couple. The woman who would come over and get Rose talking about curtains and slipcovers and what was on sale at the grocery store. And maybe the two of them would start sewing, the way Rose used to. Ned can’t remember the last time he’s come home to the whirring of Rose’s sewing machine. The noise used to annoy the hell out of him, but now he would welcome any indication that Rose is returning to her normal self.
    Instead of this neighbor he envisioned, a woman who would show Rose the road back to herself, this crazy kid moved in, this wisp of a girl with a mouth on her that would put Ty to shame.
    Again he remembers the day when she stopped by the station to use the pay phone. Her line was