A Different Kind of Normal Read online

  Books by Cathy Lamb

  Julia’s Chocolates

  The Last Time I Was Me

  Henry’s Sisters

  Such a Pretty Face

  The First Day of the Rest of My Life

  A Different Kind of Normal

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  a different kind of normal

  CATHY LAMB

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  Please turn the page for a very special Q&A with Cathy Lamb!

  A READING GROUP GUIDE - A DIFFERENT KIND OF NORMAL

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  Copyright Page

  For Travis,

  with love

  1

  My mother told me all about the witches in our family. She heard the stories from her mother, who heard them from her mother, and so on, all the way back to the mid-1800s, in London, where the twins, Henrietta and Elizabeth, started The Curse.

  Henrietta and Elizabeth were inseparable from the time they reached across their mother’s bosom for the other’s hand. Their mother was considered to be the best witch of them all, whatever that silly statement means, and she taught the twins. They practiced their spells in the forest behind the fountains and statues on the manicured estate their mother’s wealthy, titled family owned.

  The twins eventually, reluctantly, agreed to marry wealthy, titled men. They did not feel it necessary to tell their husbands of a few wild years, sins committed and sins omitted, handsome men here and there, and their mother agreed, she of a colorful past herself. “It’s our secret, dears,” she told her daughters, a pinky tilted up as she drank her tea. “Husbands don’t need to know much.”

  The twins’ elegant estates, with lands adjacent to each other, soon held all the herbs they needed for their spells, plus Canterbury bells, hollyhocks, lilies, irises, sweet peas, cosmos, red poppies, peonies, and rows of roses, which is what their mother and grandmother grew, too.

  Together Henrietta and Elizabeth had eight children who would later prove to be both saints and raucous sinners, especially the girls, as is often the case in witch families, or so I’m told.

  Sadly, though, in their late thirties the twins’ friendship fell apart because of a fight over, of all things, a tea set. At least that’s what started it. Henrietta bought the delicate white teacups, pitcher, and creamer with the pink flowers, knowing Elizabeth loved it, coveted it, but Henrietta could not resist. They were elegant, from India, hand painted, and the flowers looked as if they could talk if let loose for but a moment. There was only that one set and when Elizabeth found out what Henrietta had done, so sneakily, she was overcome with anger.

  Other rigid resentments and prickly problems, built over decades of twinship started to explode, as if the teapot had cracked in half and exposed the fine fissures between the two women. They stopped speaking to each other entirely, despite their children’s pleas that they reconcile, until one pleasant Sunday in front of the church.

  It wasn’t hot that morning, which was fortunate, as the heat could spread such rancid diseases, like scarlet fever and tuberculosis, and it wasn’t cold, which could cause a plain cough to become pneumonia in no time. There was a bit of wind, which carried off the natural odors of raw sewage, animals, rot, refuge, defecation, moldy vegetables, decaying meat, dead bodies, vagrant children, and people who had rarely bathed in their lives.

  It was a perfect sunny day with no warning of the generational damage to come.

  Henrietta and Elizabeth wore their whalebone corsets, white petticoats, beribboned hats, and elaborate, heavy dresses. They reached out white gloved hands to their proper husbands as they debarked from their horse-drawn carriages. Both couples and well-polished children were ready to show off their devoutness to the Lord, though church bored Henrietta and Elizabeth into an almost comatose state, the vicar droning on and on endlessly until both women thought they were perched on a shelf in hell.

  The twins caught a glimpse of each other on the cobblestone path, each with a hand in the crook of their husbands’ elbows. Their husbands had been chosen for their kindness, business success, and knuckleheadedness, which would allow the twins to carry on their usual witchery and spells with no interference from an observant male.

  Henrietta thought Elizabeth made a face at her. Elizabeth thought Henrietta was haughty and, as if they’d been swept up by the devil’s tail and smashed together, it all began.

  They left the clueless, cultured husbands, locked elbows with each other to pretend friendship and deflect attention, and a quiet, but intense fight broke out, their fake smiles plastered hard on their furious faces.

  Accusations were made about “stealing my precious tea set, I told you I wanted it . . .” But then things escalated viciously, as fights between sisters often will. “You’re always flirting with men like a peacock . . . you are way too prideful about your children. . . why you should get Maria married off immediately before she sleeps with another stable lad . . . what about your son, Michael? Is there any girl he hasn’t tumbled through the hay with? Your gowns are too low cut . . . you talk incessantly . . . always competing with me . . . you think your herb garden is better than mine, it never has been . . . you have to be joking, my herbs are always better than yours, stronger, that’s why we use them in the spells all the time. . . .”

  And then, the source of true bitterness and jealousy, “I should have been married to Oliver, not you, he was interested in me before you wore your purple dress with almost your entire bosom hanging out.... My bosom was not out.... Oliver would never have been interested in you with that nose.... My nose? Dear, a big nose can be hidden with powder, but big buttocks, horse buttocks, balls and tarnation, that’s not hideable, is it?”

  Oh dear.

  Henrietta started to mutter and Elizabeth, knowing a spell was coming forth, slapped a hand over Henrietta’s mouth. Henrietta grabbed Elizabeth’s flowered hat and Elizabeth clutched a handful of Henrietta’s heavy skirt. Soon they toppled to the ground, rolling, whispered curses tossed through the air, uncaring about the lace petticoats flying up, the tearing silks and satins. They were quiet in their fury, because they had no desire to advertise their witchliness. Neither wanted to be burned alive at the stake or flogged or drowned or have their clitorises checked for being too pointy, one irrefutable indication of a true witch.

  And they didn’t want it for the other, either, despite the delicate tea set with the pink painted flowers and their mutual love for Oliver.

  The deadly dull vicar sprinted out of the church, black cassock flying. He was young and naïve, and hadn’t a clue how to handle two women locked in a combative fight whispering to each other. My heavens, and praise the Lord, this would not do! Especially on the Lord’s Day! He had an important sermon planned, too, about how women must submit to their husbands! Submit to your master!

  Their husbands, chatting the pompous chat of self-satisfied, privileged men nearby, rushed over, shock pounding all the way around their lace collars and past their white underthings. What had happened to their demure, lovely wives? What on earth were they doing? This was church, and ye
s, it was tiresome to be told you were going straight to hell to burn as a sinner, but still! No fighting on the front lawn, surely they knew that?

  Their children watched, surprised but highly amused, especially the teenage girls, who had already joyfully learned how to quietly rebel and not get caught. Look at their fighting mothers! Pulling hair and slapping, their dresses flipped over their knees!

  The witches’ last, frantic roll together marked the beginning of decades of tragedy that affected someone in each generation of one of the witch’s families. In the ensuing struggle one witch hissed out a spiraling curse, and before the other witch could deflect it by shooting off a defensive spell, the husbands and vicar were forcibly separating them, their feet kicking, skirts whipped up.

  “What has gotten into you, Elizabeth?” Philip Compton loved his family, but he was brought up around royalty and pompous, unearned titles, and this behavior was unseemly, improper! What was his wife doing on top of her twin sister? This was extraordinary!

  “For God’s sake, Henrietta!” Oliver Platts was handsome, but dense like cheese, and he could hardly believe what he was seeing! He was running for political office, too. Didn’t Henrietta know they had appearances to keep up?

  “Ladies, let’s take a moment to pray,” the vicar said, shaking, the women’s perky hats long gone, their thick, auburn hair curling wildly over heaving bosoms. He felt himself growing hot at the sight of the bosoms, and the hair, and the red cheeks! Oh, shame to him! Those bosoms were enough to make him forget his vows and certainly his chastity. He dropped his head, his pale white hands clasped together tight. Oh, deliver us, Lord! Save us from the devil and devilish thoughts about bosoms! “Lord, we ask for your forgiveness today . . .” His voice trembled as bosoms frolicked through his prayer. “We are all sinners, unworthy of you. . . .”

  Henrietta and Elizabeth were having none of that droning, praying stuff. As everyone else bent their heads, they leaped at each other again with guttural cries, but their husbands, on alert, grabbed them midflight and shoved them back into their carriages, dresses askew, gloves gone.

  In bed that night, the husbands, to their immense relief, had their docile, fawning wives back again. The witches pretended they had been overtaken by the stifling heat; perhaps it was the tomatoes they had both eaten the day before? Maybe the porridge had been poisoned? Could the devil had crawled inside of them? It took a few well-placed caresses, some dewy eyes, long kisses, a lifting of the nightgown, and soon their husbands, who saw only what they wished to see, rolled off to their side of the bed, mollified.

  But in the pitch, thick blackness of the night, one witch shook with shame and guilt, and the other shook in complete and absolute terror. Both clutched the necklaces they always wore, the same necklaces they had given to their daughters. There were three charms: a cross, a heart, and a star. A cross for Jesus, a heart for family, and a star to represent the power of witchcraft.

  Henrietta and Elizabeth were never friends again. How could they be with spells like that flying around recklessly? But they missed each other desperately and cried harsh, lonely tears, in private, often.

  The Curse began immediately, afflicting the baby the witch didn’t even know she was pregnant with yet. He was born with only one arm. Henrietta cried over him, cursing her twin.

  Elizabeth cried, too. She had never meant for the spell to be so strong, so insidious, and within ten years, her guilt killed her. She toppled over in her summer garden, right between the thyme and mint.

  Her sister witch cried for a year. Henrietta became an attentive second mother to Elizabeth’s children. When she died at seventy-six years old, right before her eyes went blank, she sat straight up in bed, stared into a corner, her wrinkled face transformed with an illuminating smile. She held up a hand, as if she was reaching out to hold another’s, and said, “Elizabeth, I have missed you, sister. . . .”

  At least, that’s the story I was told by my mother.

  Her mother told her.

  Her mother told her, and so on, who heard it from the daughter of one of the witches, who stood close by and listened with increasing fright as her mother and her mother’s twin sister spewed out intricate, menacing spells. The daughter recognized the final spell and clasped a hand over her mouth. The other witch’s daughter did the same.

  Their mothers had taught them all they needed to know.

  And that spell, well, that one was a doozer. On that pleasant Sunday morning, in London, in front of a church and a vicar who was fascinated by heaving bosoms, the damage was done. In each generation, The Curse reappears.

  But I don’t believe in witches, or curses, or spells.

  No, I don’t.

  I really don’t.

  It’s a legend. A story. A colorful history to laugh and chuckle about in our family line.

  It is a fanciful tale. I am sure of it.

  I am, at least, 90 percent sure.

  I think.

  2

  He was born with a big head.

  Not a slightly larger head than normal, but a huge head, as if another head had been added on and then shrunk down to about half the size, without the eyes/nose/mouth features, before getting stuck on the first head. One eye was higher than the other.

  Most would call it a deformity, a mistake, a handicap. In the future, they would pity him, or be disgusted, uncomfortable, mean. Oh, how mean they would be.

  When my baby nephew arrived from between my sister’s shaking legs at the hospital, bluish in color, he wasn’t breathing. His head seemed to be pulsing, his veins engorged, the fontanel swollen.

  I thought he was dead. I thought he’d been dead a long time and I stifled a ragged, anguished cry.

  My own mother, the baby’s nana, America’s most famous soap opera actress, a woman who is ambitious, focused, and rational, cried out, “Oh my God, it’s The Curse again.”

  “No it’s not—” I grabbed her arm. “Don’t even say that!”

  “It is, Jaden, it is.” She sank against the wall, her slender legs giving out, her pink lace, couture dress, designed especially for her by Ruben, a new designer, wrinkled as she slid. “It’s The Curse.”

  “Move, people, move!” one doctor, in blue scrubs, shouted over my sister’s piercing screams. “We’ve got seconds, make ’em count. Move!”

  Immediately, the doctors—already sweating the difficult labor and delivery, berating my sister for not getting any prenatal care, for this should not have happened, this birth should not have happened, this bigheaded baby should not have happened—went to work.

  “Shit,” I heard one of the frantic doctors whisper. “Aw, shit.”

  “Baby’s not breathing!” another doctor shouted.

  “Mother’s bleeding . . . oh my God, mother’s hemorrhaging!”

  The bluish, throbbing baby and my sister were surrounded, and I was pushed aside, but those words sent panic skittering through my body, tears blurring my vision.

  Brooke collapsed back on the bed, all blood draining from her face, as she screeched one more time, her green eyes rolling back in her head, neck arched, as if it were her last breath. Her auburn hair, the same color as mine, the same as my mother’s, was glued to her head from sweat.

  The doctors and nurses, a wall of blue-scrubbed people, continued barking orders and shouting, some fighting to save my sister’s life, the blood gushing out, spilling from the gurney to the floor, and others fighting to save the baby’s life.

  My mother was half-lying on the floor, as white as her daughter. She put her trembling hands up in the air, her perfectly polished red nails twitching as she whispered a chant, something to do with freeing the living spirits, jasmine, and love force, and when she was done she uttered, finally, a prayer, “Dear God, get in here right this minute and help us, damn it.”

  I tried to get to my sister, to hold her seizing body, to bring life back to the fading green eyes that seemed to be only half with us, but they wouldn’t let me near her.

  “G
et out, get out!” one nurse yelled at me, pushing me toward the door as I fought.

  “I want to be with my sister! Let me stay with Brooke!”

  Oh no, that could not happen. No staying. “We’re taking care of them! Go, go!”

  “Move the family out of the way, out of the way!”

  The baby, his head swollen, was placed in an Isolette in seconds as the doctors whipped him out of the room and raced into the corridor.

  I tried to run after the baby, my mother wobbling behind me on her heels in shock, but two nurses stopped us at the swinging white doors of the ICU, grabbing our arms, holding us close, our hands outstretched toward the baby as we cried, we pleaded. They were gentle, they were firm, both men strong and immovable. We could not go. They were sorry.

  The doors slammed shut, locking, as that teeny-tiny body was rolled away into the sterility of a white corridor, more doctors rushing to meet him.

  “Help Brooke,” my mother gasped, pushing me with weak hands back into the hospital room, as she tumbled straight down. The nurses lunged to help my mother and no one noticed me this time as I raced back into my sister’s room. There was blood all over. I didn’t know someone could bleed that much and still live. She was covered in doctors and nurses, an oxygen mask over her face, cloths between her legs.

  “Okay,” one of the doctors panted. “We’re moving mother, on three.” Again, for the second time in less than two minutes, a family member was whipped out of the hospital room and rushed behind those swinging, locking white doors, where my mother and I couldn’t go.

  We couldn’t go there.

  Couldn’t go with my sister, couldn’t go with my brand-new nephew.

  Why? Because they were dying. One wasn’t breathing, one was bleeding out.

  A “Code This” and “Code That” were shouted over the intercom, people in blue scrubs and white jackets sprinting past me. I gathered my semi-hysterical mother up and we clutched each other on the floor, our tears a river.