Discovering Normal (2 page)

Beth reached in to unbuckle Audrey and set her on the ground. Instantly she bent and plucked a clover that she obviously thought was a flower and extended it to her mother.

“Thank you, Miss Audrey.”

“You’re welcome!”

Beth snatched the foil-covered lasagna pan that was still warm and very heavy, and clutched it with the potholders she’d remembered to grab. “Slide your hand into my pocket while we cross the road, honey.” She was grateful that Audrey was the kind of child who would never consider not listening. Audrey had Beth’s own blueblood sense of right and proper.

Beth walked with her little girl’s hand tucked safely into her jeans and paused near the park road. An
sports car
whizzed by and Audrey moved closer. They crossed through the pines and maples to the area where the others gathered.

“Beth!” Ramona called and nudged her husband Jackson.

He jumped up and scrambled to Beth’s side, relieving her of the burden of the heavy pan. He leaned his stocky frame and balding head in to give Beth a buss on the cheek and tousle Audrey’s sun-drenched hair. “Where’s Chris?”

“He had some work to finish. He’ll be along.”

“Damn cows,” Jack said as he carried the Corningware to the table.

Ramona was waiting with a peach wine cooler that she extended to Beth. “Damn cows,” she repeated.

Beth took the clear, cold bottle and took a sip. She shook her head as she spoke. “No, the milking staff is there. He’s doing other things.”

Jack clinked his beer bottle to Beth’s wine cooler. “How ‘bout we check out the playground, Audrey?”

“Can I, Mommy?” Audrey was bouncing in her pink princess sandals.

“Go ahead. Just be careful.”

Jack, who had always wanted a little girl in addition to the four boys he’d been sent, offered his chubby palm to Audrey who took it and skipped beside him.

Ramona peeled up a corner of foil. “This looks and smells too damn good.”

Beth slid onto a picnic table bench and took another sip. “Who knows?”

Ramona studied her for a moment, but that’s all it took. She re-covered the dish and sat down at Beth’s side. “How are things?”

Beth shrugged and wiped a bead of sweat from her bottle. “The same. Day after day after day
…
”
             
“Have you tried talking to him? Telling him how unhappy you are?”

Beth closed her eyes and tried to remember what
all right
felt like. It’d been such a long time ago. “I did try, Ramona. You know that. I’ve tried for two years. It’s always the same response. It’s
my
fault.
I’m spoiled, I want too much, I’m never satisfied, I don’t know how to be content.”

Ramona gathered her auburn hair into her hand and twisted a bright blue scrunchy that had been resting around her wrist through it. “What did he say about the counseling?”

Beth turned to meet her friend’s eyes. “What do you think he said?”
             
“Four letters?”

“With instructions for me personally.”

Ramona glanced toward her twin boys and Noah as they frolicked in the pool. “It’s never easy being married, Beth. It’s such hard work and maybe you’re just at one of those spots--”

Beth shook her head. She’d heard it all before and she didn’t want to hear it yet again. “But it used to be easy for us, Ramona. It was
so
easy and now it’s just so hard.”

“So that’s it then?”

“I think so.”

“When are you telling him?”
             
Beth set the bottle down and rubbed her fingernail along a dried blop of ketchup on a picnic table plank. “Tonight, though I don’t think he’ll be surprised. I’d like to leave in time to get Noah into school for the first day. My mother found a good pre-school for Audrey so at least they’ll be situated while I try and figure out what’s next.”

Ramona slid her much larger hand over Beth’s slender one. “What in the world will I do without you? You’re my only classy friend.”

Beth smiled and blinked back the tear forming behind her eye. “Connecticut isn’t the other side of the world. I’ll visit, you’ll visit. I’ll be back and forth with the kids.”

“Will he give you a divorce?”

Beth sucked in a hearty breath. “I truly don’t know. He may fight it or he may just be ambivalent enough now to say
fine.
”

Ramona tilted her head as if she needed to be absolutely certain. “And that’s what you want. You
want
a divorce?”

Beth opened her arms to catch Audrey who was running full speed toward her. She wrapped them around her daughter and snuggled her close. “It’s what I want.”

***

Chris effortlessly caught the beer that Jackson tossed his way and grinned.

“Fast,” Jackson said as he approached and smacked his back.

Chris popped the top. “Every time I come within ten feet of you, you do the same damn thing. It’s anticipation--
Basic Instinctual Procedure 101.”

Jackson popped his own can. “Spoken like
a
Special Service agent or something.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

They walked together toward the tables that were now filled with picnickers, all celebrating Garrity’s Founder’s Day.

“Beth said you were working.”

“Always working, my friend.” Chris took a long slug. Beth shot him an icy stare and he took another.

“How do the crops look?”

Chris hoisted Audrey, who had scaled his leg, to his hip. “All right. More rain would’ve been better, but they’re okay.”

“We’re hoping for a good harvest all the way around. Can’t even think about next year until we see what this one yields.”

Jackson Dodd was a seed salesman--a terrible one since he was too nice, too compassionate, too friendly to charge what his product was worth. He considered every farmer in Ontario his friend, and Chris one of his best. Luckily Jackson’s father still kept his hand in the business so there was always a bit of revenue and luckier still, Jack’s wife Ramona was a transplanted Yankee herself--Dover, Delaware born and raised. She and Beth became fast friends and the future had seemed shining and perfect.

Chris didn’t know a rat’s ass about farming when he and Beth had bought the land. He was a city boy--Philadelphia PA--and his life had been more stickball and cheese steak than crops and milking parlors. But he was smart and determined and he always managed to accomplish what he wanted to. He and Beth had some money. After the
siege
and Beth’s long journey back, they’d been the golden children of the Bureau. A hefty private
gift
from Hamilton Tweed, their combined severance and a small loan from Beth’s father had set them up in the best dairy-farm-style.

They got married in a chapel just a mile from the farm and danced with two hundred of their closest friends until the sun was rising over the Garrity countryside the next morning. The bride and groom vetoed a honeymoon trip, opting instead to stumble home and spend the next week holed up in their newly purchased farmhouse which was in dire need of remodeling. They locked the door to the rest of the world and made love for six full days with barely a pause.

And when the time came to emerge, Chris found that he loved the land, loved the animals and the air that was fresh and not tainted with smog and honking horns. And at first Beth had seemed to love it too. Loved learning, loved helping, loved curling on the porch swing with a book and a glass of iced tea.

She loved being a mother--loved sharing every moment with their son who arrived on their first anniversary and then later their daughter. Beth was constantly snapping pictures and mailing fat envelops with colorful stickers attached to both of their families. Beth had smiled all the time and life was so damn good because they’d seen how infected and evil it could be when you weren’t as lucky as they were.

Then something changed and Chris still couldn’t manage to figure out what the hell it was.

Audrey wrapped her arms around Chris’ neck, gave a tight squeeze and squirmed down again. He watched her prance off--the little lady who was such a sharp contrast to any child he’d ever known--and turned back to Jack. “Always seems to work out in the end.”

Jack gave Chris’ back another hearty slap. “Doesn’t it though? Come on over here. Want you to meet the Perrys’. They bought the old Dennison farm. Big plans.”

Chris followed Jack to a table near the pool and didn’t look at Beth as he passed her. He knew she didn’t look at him either. They’d become those now--just figures
who
weren’t acknowledged until it was absolutely necessary.

“Chris Stoddard, Rick Perry.”

Chris extended his hand to the guy with big ears and a ruddy complexion evident under an awkward cowboy hat. Chris had to have ten years on the guy, but judging from his limp handshake, he wouldn’t last a year in the dairy business. “Hi, good to meet you.”

“You’re the government agent, right? I heard them talking about you down at the diner. I can’t believe you’re my neighbor.”

Some things just never left you. Chris smirked and slid onto the bench. “Used to be in another life.”

“Wow, I remember watching the
Jaelyn
coverage on the news. I was riveted to the screen. And you gave that all up for this.” Rick looked around and then back.

Chris took a long swig of beer.

Rick’s homely wife linked her arm with his and pulled him near. “What’s this all about? Are you famous?”
she asked.

Rick nudged his hat back on his head with one finger and faced her. “You’ve gotta remember
Jaelyn
!”

Jack balanced a hip on the edge of the table. “I’ll give you the
Cliff Notes
. The United States ambassador to Finland, Hamilton Tweed’s, sixteen-year-old daughter was kidnapped…how long ago now, Chris?”

Chris sighed and extended his long legs under the table. “Twelve years.”

“Right.” Jack turned back to the new neighbors. “She was taken at gunpoint from her boarding school in Sweden by the
Flora Sky
--a weird cult who left their message and their philosophy of female submission all over her dorm room. There was no word, nothing for months and then they get this film showing her saying shit like “
Death to
Liberty
” and “
I now serve ‘The Master’
”. Completely brainwashed. But, the weird little twist, this psychotic group wants money. Lots of it. The government starts investigating because it’s a diplomat’s kid, and finds that this ‘master’ is really Harold Holden from Tulsa, Oklahoma. The guy was a thug in his day, but reinvented himself as this religious freak as a cover for drugs, guns, you name it. He had middle eastern dealings, all sorts of shit.” Jack caught himself then. He was in the presence of a lady, even if she was a butt-ugly one. “Sorry, all sorts of
stuff
, and about twenty ‘wives’ to sweeten the pot.

“Turns out he’s lured tons of rich kids into this cult, bilked money from desperate parents who want their kids back.
He always made sure to send a tape..
.parents will do anything when they see their kids on a video tape. Then when it was time to be released, some of them disappeared after the family was framed; some were found later, dead in deserts and washed up on the shore of the Arctic. He didn’t give a shit.”

Chris sat and listened to the tale he’d heard told hundreds of times and raised his eyes to see the two starring in fascination as Jack relayed the story.

“Well, when all this was finally determined, the Bureau of Special Services was called in. They br
ought
their narcotics squad--the best of the best--piloted by none other than Farmer Stoddard here. But they need a way in, and they find that in Chris’ partner, profiler extraordinaire who specialize
d
in psychological warfare. She also happens to be Chris’ wife and is dishing up lasagna right over there.”

All eyes turned to Beth, still the most refined lasagna distributor Chris had ever seen. She’d pulled her ponytail down and her silky brown hair swung over her shoulder as she cut and served. It was almost impossible to remember that Beth had stumbled through learning to cook with quite a few dismal attempts before she finally proved victorious. Now she could make cobbler and pot roast and hand tossed pizza like it was nobody’s business. She’d become known as one of the best cooks in town. The phone rang
constantly
with of
How did you do that? Why won’t mine rise?,
and
Why doesn’t it taste like yours?

Chris looked back to the couple
who
were as mesmerized as if they were five and sitting at their grandfather’s knee to hear a yarn and Jack kept spinning. “Beth
slipped
in, establishe
d
a relationship with the kid and g
ot
her out of there. The whole damn free world was watching, waiting, because it could’ve gone either way and came close to it quite a few times.” Jack paused. “You didn’t learn about this in school, Dora?”