Pretending Normal by Mary Campisi

back.”
    Ugh! The feet! I sniff hard. No stinky cabbage smell… yet.
    Ms. O’Grady emerges from the living room. “Come on, Sara, we’ve got a lot to do.”
    This is the understatement of the century. We climb down rickety wooden steps, open-slatted in the back. Boxes stack five high at the bottom of the steps, heaps of clothing scatter an old picnic table, a fishing pole and wading boots hang from the cobwebbed rafters. Vases, lamps, trinkets— junk— line the makeshift plywood shelves along the walls.
    And this is only what I can see. Once I step around the corner, there’s a whole other half of basement. I’ll be stuck here until I’m twenty-five! Thanks, Frank, thanks a lot.
    “We’ll start with the clothes.” Ms. O’Grady snatches her red pen from behind her ear and places a check in the steno book. “All of it goes. We’ll fold it and box it up.” She points to the stacks of boxes at the base of the step. “Get one of those.”
    I know the Salvation Army accepts all donations, but honestly, these clothes are gross, even for desperate people . Wool vests with big brass buttons, polyester pants hooked to suspenders, printed aprons, white shirts worn to yellow, pleated skirts that I couldn’t get my leg in, hand-knit booties. I snatch the booties, lift them to my nose. No cabbage. There’s a whole O’Grady timeline here. “How old are these clothes?” I ask Ms. O’Grady when we close the fourth box.
    “Five, ten, twenty- six years. Father wouldn’t let us touch anything after Mother died, but now, he’s got it in his head that he’s dying, too, and he wants to get rid of everything.”
    “Is he, dying I mean?”
    Ms. O’Grady shakes her cropped head. “He’s not dying. He’s just tired of living.”
    By late afternoon, we have twelve boxes for the Salvation Army . It takes three trips in Ms. O’Grady’s green Caprice Classic to drop them off. On the way home, she pulls into Mini-Mart to grab us a drink. Ms. O’Grady likes Orange Crush, says it reminds her of when she was a little girl and she and her sister used to dunk saltine crackers in their glasses and then lick off all the orange from the cracker. She tells me that story when we are sitting in the Mini-Mart parking lot, sipping our drinks. Her dark eyes glitter with the telling, and when she leans over and whispers that the orange mustaches made her father turn five shades of red and his nose pinch up, she laughs and says that was part of the reason they did it. It is then I wonder about the tale that filters through town breathing new life with each retelling.
    Is this the same woman who sucked in life on a full breath, let it weave through her body like patchwork pieces, no beginning, no end, and declared she would die if she stayed one more day in Norwood?
    And if it is, why did she come back? Why hadn’t she stayed in Buffalo, rented a room from a gray-haired couple, got a cat, taught typing to young business-minded women who wanted more than the title of housewife? And why most of all had she hacked her hair short, wiped off her red lipstick and crept back to town, the brunt of Norwood gossip, then and now?
    Is the real Evelyn O’Grady hidden inside this woman sitting next to me, tucked away so nice and neat and secure, that she might never find her way out again? Has she ever tired of the sameness, the face of her father turning five shades of red, his nose pinching up when she does something he disapproves of, even though she is a grown woman? Or, does she no longer do anything or even think anything that he would disapprove of?
    “Ms. O’Grady?”
    “Sara?”
    “There’s something I want to ask you.” All I want to know is if she really went to Buffalo and if she did, why she came back and does she regret it?
    “Not now.” Her dark brown gaze flits over me, kind and sad, all at once.
    She lifts her can in salute and it is then I notice the faint orange line above her upper lip. And I know, with my whole heart, that