Excerpt of Pretending Normal by Mary Campisi

Almost two months have passed since I left and came to live here. I only went back to the old house once, to pack up some clothes and a few books. Aunt Irene said not to worry about bringing a lot of things with me; we'd buy what I needed, kind of like taking on a new identity. I know she wants to give me a fresh start, but I can't erase fifteen years with a new bedspread and a different address.

My old life is somewhere deep inside. A closet full of new clothes and a different zip code won't make it go away...and I don't think I want it to. Some days I have to look in the mirror, touch my face, speak in my voice, to see that at least I'm in the same body, at least I haven't disappeared altogether. ***

Summer 1976
We buried my mother fifty–seven days ago in St. Augustine's Cemetery. There's no tombstone yet, but Father Torrence said she'll have one before winter. I don't care because I'm not going back. Why would I? To talk to a rectangle of grass covering a box stuffed with decaying body parts?

She's not there anyway. Helen Lenore Polokovich is in our backyard, breathing life through her roses—the prizes she loved as much as Kay and me. That's where I go to talk to her because I can see her, and I can hear her. I can.

It was supposed to be a simple surgery, routine, she called it. Many women my age have hysterectomies, she said. Why wouldn't we believe her? After all, she was a nurse. But she didn't say anything about a myocardial infarction. I burned the word in my brain the second Dr. Borchard said it.

And now, it's just me, and Kay, and him.

I'm sitting on my bed with a Sears and Roebuck catalog, planning my escape from this great metropolis of Norwood, Pennsylvania, population 4,582. Two more years. If I break it into very small chunks, I might get through it.

If I move to Hawaii, I won't need a winter coat. Or snow boots. I will need a swimsuit, though, lots of them. Bikinis. I flip through the Sears and Roebuck swimsuit section, find one in navy and white trim, another in hot pink, a third in black. And in three months, when the new catalog comes out, its thin pages smooth and unwrinkled, I can pick all over again.

If I move to Hawaii, the only thing I'll ever have to shovel is sand, white stuff, lots of it, sifting between my toes, sticking to my Coppertone calves. I can sit on the beach and drink from a coconut, watch the sun fall into the ocean every night. That's what the brochure says, doesn't it? I yank open the top drawer of the nightstand, grab the pamphlet Aunt Irene gave me last spring and flip to page five. ‘Enjoy the beautiful stillness of a Hawaiian night, sipping exotic refreshments from a coconut as you watch the glorious ball of sun drift into the ocean.' Close enough.

But I'll be happy in Florida, too, in a big, white house with orange trees in the backyard. Every morning I'll pluck the oranges from their limbs and squeeze sweet juice into my glass. I might even think about Georgia—peaches and the Atlanta Braves. Maybe even North Carolina.

I push the brochures aside, scoot down on my pillow and heave a long sigh. Hawaii. Florida. Georgia. North Carolina. Who am I kidding? I'll settle for any place where the butcher and the undertaker aren't the same person. Any place but Norwood. If you don't get out, you get stuck working at the Beechmont Paper Mill or the A&P. Or, if you are lucky enough to escape to college and stupid enough to come back, you'll get hired by Norwood General Hospital; nurse, respiratory therapist, lab technician.

Not me, though. Two more years and I'm gone. Then I can order a Big Mac every night if I want to, or a Whopper—with fries, and a chocolate shake. Maybe I'll pick a college based on the number of McDonalds and Burger Kings in the area, since Norwood has none. I laugh out loud. Mom would have had a fit. He would just call me a goddamn imbecile.

Who cares? He's the goddamn imbecile, he's the one who thinks he's such a hot shot because he's head foreman at the mill. He's been there for thirty–three years; he should be president of the place by now. So what if he's in charge of one hundred and three employees? So what if he knows how to operate every piece of machinery, knows all the supplier's products, has his name on the door of a pathetic cubicle he calls an office? So what?

So what?