2.
~ Norma had a lot of experience with moving into a new place. She'd long ago lost count of how many moves her parents had participated in. How many school she'd gone to. It all seemed to have molded together and become fuzzy. She didn't remember friend's names and how old she was at this school in that town. Her life was ghost like. Drifting and leaving no lasting impression.
White Pine Bay, in early fall, was the 'slow season' and seemed eerily devoid of people. The downtown area looked capable of catering to a literal hoard of tourists at any given time, but at the moment seemed oddly deflated.
"It's a one room only. This building used to print the newspaper for about fifty years, but they went bankrupt." The older woman said as she slowly made her way up the stairs to their new home. "Not one bedroom, I'm afraid, just one big room. But it has a small kitchen and bathroom. I installed the shower last year. I usually rent it to the summer people. You know, people who come for the hiking and fishing. They don't need much you know. Outdoor types."
Norma had her doubts. The building felt old. They had to climb up three flights of stairs and she didn't like the idea of no privacy from her mother.
"I love these old buildings." Fanny said happily. "So romantic. I wish they still built them like this."
The landlady, Birdie, she said her name was, tossed her a strange look that Norma understood perfectly. No one would willingly want to live here, but at $150 a month, this was a good deal.
"You got a nice view, ladies." Birdie said. "All of downtown White Pine Bay. What there is of it this time of year. The new police department is being built down the street just now, but it's normally pretty quite."
Norma gasped when Birdie opened the door. The narrow enclosed hallway hadn't prepared them for the massive room. It's ceilings were at least twenty feet high and had generous windows that granted an impressive view of the picture perfect town, and Norma could easily put up simple curtains to divide it.
"Newspaper people had desks all over." Birdie was explaining. The printing press is in the basement. Afraid it doesn't heat well in the winter. Why it's a summer rental."
"We'll take it." Norma said eagerly.
~ The benefits of traveling light were great, but mother and daughter had no furniture. Fanny happily explained to anyone who would listen that she'd dramatically left her husband to give her daughter a better life and couldn't take much with her.
Norma didn't spoil it for her. Maybe it was easy to weave a romantic lie than to admit this was their normal way of life. It was normal for them to abandon their home and cheap, second hand possessions behind. Normal to never be attached to things, or places or people. It was normal to be ghosts. Easily forgotten about as soon as they were gone.
Birdie directed them to the Good Will in town which she swore was decent.
"They sell stuff from Portland and Seattle." she told them while Fanny paid first and last months rent in cash.
Like their new home, Norma was doubtful about what they would find, but was pleasantly surprised. In a few days, two beds, two dressers, a couch, rocking chair, kitchen table and chairs were delivered with nice mattresses that smelled comfortingly chemical cleaners.
The Calhoun's had hardly ever bothered with a TV. When Norma was very young she remembered the old TV with rabbit ears and tinfoil. But, the cost of such a luxury was too much each month. They had rented a TV and VCR for a while when times were good, but times were seldom that good. So, things like a TV, phone and other diversions weren't apart of Norma's life. The family always made calls at the payphone or had a neighbor take their calls for them. It helped not to have bill collectors calling you all the time anyway and seeing commercials for things you couldn't afford.
Norma had always had a library card and radio; that was enough. There was always a dollar matinee to go to with Caleb, or the park.
"Why do you want to be way back here, Norma Louise?" Fanny asked innocently wandering into the space Norma had designated as her room. She'd strung a clothes line from one side of the wall to the other in the far corner and hung the itchy fire blankets they'd gotten at Good Will to act as a wall.
"Will you please just call me Norma?" Norma snapped feeling irritation that her mother was interfering with her personal space. "Norma Louise sounds like we're hillbilly trash."
Fanny looked hurt. The name Norma and Louise were the names of her two grandmothers and it had been a brilliant idea by her parents to combine the two.
"And this is my room now so can you please leave?" she waved at her mother to leave but the older woman didn't seem to understand.
"I thought you'd want to stay by the window." she said thumbing to the large windows where they'd stuck the couch and rocking chair. The spacious room seeming to swallow the furniture up whole. Norma had cloistered herself in the very back with brick walls surrounding three sides. Her "bedroom" was small but far more private this way.
"People can see in the windows." Norma said simply and started to finally unpack her only two boxes. One box for clothes, one for the rest of her stuff.
"Don't be silly!" Fanny sang happily. "We're three stories up. Besides, who wants to look through our windows?"
Norma glared at her mother.
"I need to unpack." she said feeling annoyance rise up in her like vomit.
"I'll help you." Fanny said. "We're lucky. We have a Laundromat just down the street. Remember when we had to walk a mile just to do laundry? You and Caleb had to lug dirty and clean laundry the whole way."
She'd said all this like it had been a happy memory. As if Norma would have ever looked back on it fondly. She'd said it as though she'd been there instead of making her two kids walk alone when she could have easily driven them.
"Can you please let me unpack?" Norma said dryly and with no attempt to hide her disgust.
"You're just being cranky. Honestly, I don't know what's been wrong with you this past year." Fanny said and moved out of Norma's room.
"And next time ask my permission before coming into my bedroom, Mother!" Norma shouted after her.
~ It was an easy, and yet depressing process to unpack her things. Her clothes consisted of two oversized t-shirts she used for sleeping in, two pairs of jeans, and some frayed shorts, five T-shirts, two skirts, half a dozen holy panties, and three bras. All of which fitted easily into her used dresser. In Florida, the family had no need for jackets and it was perfectly acceptable to go to school in flip-flops all year long. Now, in Oregon, with the chill of fall already feeling painful, Norma knew she would need real shoes and a coat.
She hated asking anyone for anything and preferred the illusion of not needing things and getting them for herself.
But her mother had quickly hidden away the bank money bag and Norma didn't want to ask for any cash to buy shoes, socks and a coat.
She unpacked her second box which was all her personal items. Her cheap shampoo and conditioner, hairbrush, deodorant, soap, toothbrush and toothpaste. She unpacked her tape deck and the little suitcase that held all her mixed tapes with her favorite music on it.
She wondered with mild annoyance if there was a good radio station here in the mountains. It wouldn't surprise her at all if it was all country music. She found her ancient Strawberry Shortcake metal lunchbox from when she was in grade school. She'd taken her lunch to school for years in this before the family realized she qualified for the free hot lunches. She'd received a small Strawberry Shortcake doll with cherry red hair and pink clothes as a birthday present when she was seven, and she remembered falling in love with the smell of her. The doll had smelled like cakes, sugar and good things baking.
Norma had always kept the lunchbox and doll along with the small, molded plastic toys of Smurfs and other characters. She didn't care about having something like a baby doll or a Barbie the way some girls did. It wasn't an issue because the family never thought to get one for her. She didn't want to play mommy or pretend to be a business woman in a pink suit. She preferred to play with her small horses and plastic figures and send them on adventures or build them houses with Caleb. Her dime store childhood toys were now safely stashed in her old lunch box. Remembered, but not played with.
She found the good sized mirror that would always sit neatly on any dresser and looked expensive but wasn't, and the tacky 1970's table lamp that she and Caleb loved because it was so large and ugly.
The room seemed nicer now with her lamp casting soft light and her quilt spread over her freshly made bed. Her small collection of books looked tattered and sad on top of her dresser. But she couldn't bare to part with them, no matter how worn they became.
She refused to look at her scrapbooks that were at the very bottom of the box. They'd been the ones she and Caleb had always worked on for fun before he abandoned her.
They'd find old magazines for free at the library and would spend the entire weekend pasting together and making intricate collages that reminded Norma of record albums. She'd confessed this was what she wanted to do. Make artwork that wasn't traditional artwork.
Caleb had encouraged her in this ambition and then left her. So, the scrapbooks and photo albums had stayed at the bottom of her good moving box for months now.
"Norma Louise?" Fanny called out. "We need toilet paper and groceries. I'm going to run down to the supermarket. Want to come?"
Norma ignored her mother. She wouldn't respond until Fanny complied with the simple request of just calling her Norma.
"I guess not." Fanny said sounding almost childish. Like a little girl who was about to start a sulk.
Norma heard the front door close and her mothers footsteps down the stairs and breathed a sigh of relief that she was alone for a while.
The apartment wasn't bad at all. The bathroom worked and the kitchen was too small to easily become as filthy as Fanny would always let it. They had their small box of dishes. Four plates, four bowls, mismatched glasses and flatware. Their kitchenware was an even bigger joke. One frying pan and two cooking pots Fanny had picked up at a yard sale. No coffee maker or toaster, no microwave.
The family's electricity was always apt to be cut off and as long as the gas stove worked, they could still cook.
Norma thought the apartment would serve as a good dance studio with all it's impressive space and did a little twirl that fanned out the summer dress she was wearing. It was too thin here to wear this for much longer. She'd have to go back to the Good Will shop tomorrow and find something practical to see her through the winter.
Norma pirouetted and liked the feel of her skirt falling around her in graceful waves. She vaguely wondered where her mother hid the money. Someplace her father, or the kids wouldn't look for anything. There were few places to hide things in the apartment. Norma checked the empty freezer and the bathroom cabinet. Fanny had failed to bring the towels from home and that was another item Norma would have to deal with.
Finally, in a moment of inspiration, she lifted the tank lid of the toilet and saw the bank bag there. Sealed in a ziplock bag to keep the water away and taped artfully to the bottom of the lid. She smiled, pleased with herself and removed ten, twenty dollar bills. Fanny wouldn't miss it and Norma needed better clothes.
She practically danced past the windows and into her room where she stashed the cash in her pillow slip.
'I wonder when school starts.' she thought turning on her radio and trying to find a station to listen to. She felt suddenly giddy at the idea that she'd stolen money from her mother and would be starting a new school soon. She could lie about her name if she wanted to. Give herself a nickname. An entirely new backstory. She could say she was from San Fransisco where all the people were beautiful and smiled all the time. She could tell her fellow classmates about the trolly there and the hills. She could tell them she was a military brat and the family went to all sorts of exotic places and none of them were trailer parks.
She smiled when 'The Cranberries' came on the radio with alarmingly beautiful clarity and turned the volume up.
Maybe everything would be okay after all.
~ Norma's movements in the third floor apartment didn't go unnoticed. Alex Romero wasn't used to seeing any activity in the old newspaper building. Not this time of year, anyway. Maybe it was a cleaning woman who was moving around and seeming to dance alone there.
He thought she looked too young, but he couldn't be sure. She was pretty. Blond and slender and she seemed… happy. As if she was content being all alone up there.
"Alex!" Dominic Romero barked at his son. "What are you doing? Finish loading up this truck."
Alex jumped at his father's harsh words. His father was like a foul junkyard dog that everyone instinctively avoided. Alex Romero, as his son, had no reprieve from his father's demands and volatile nature.
"Unload these boxes." Dominic said harshly. "Take them to the record room like I told you."
"Right, Sheriff." Alex said in a low tone. He always thought of his father as 'Sir' or 'Sheriff' and never called him anything else. Dominic Romero had been the White Pine Bay Sheriff for four terms now. An unprecedented feat of accomplishment if he'd ever had a running mate to go against.
Currently, the Sheriff and his seventeen year old son were moving files from the old station to the newly built one. The records room was done and Dominic was eager to be moved in. The county of White Pine Bay had a large number of paper records but no one was looking forward to the inevitable upgrade to computers soon. Dominic had grumbled non stop about having to learn to use a computer when he'd done well enough without them all this time.
As a result, in an act of rebellion, Alex had signed up for the new computer classes at school last year. It would be nice to be good at something his father failed to even try to do.
Alex unloaded the boxes out of the wagon and glanced again at the girl in the window. She wasn't in view from the street side now but the lights were still on.
He found himself wondering about her. She wasn't a summer person, that was for sure. The summer people came and went like the plagues of Egypt. They drove nice cars and had all terrain vehicles. The summer people had defiantly left earlier that month. So who was she? Alex knew everyone in town. The curse of the Sheriff's only child, and he didn't know her. He would have remembered her.
"Alex!" Dominic snarled and pulled the young man out of his musings. "You go stupid or something? Get it together!"
Alex looked away and gently nudged the dolly into place so they could unload all the boxes quickly.
"I want you here with me tomorrow to." Dominic was saying.
Alex wanted to argue, but said softly. "Tomorrow's the last day of summer."
"You know, I paid for your driver's ED class last year and bought you a new car. The least you can do is help out. I need you here." Dominic said sourly.
Alex sighed.
Again with the car, again with the driver's ED class he'd been allowed to take out of the graciousness of his dad's heart. His 'new car' was a ten year old family station wagon with grotesque wood paneling on the sides. Alex had thought his dad had been joking when he brought it home from a police auction.
His friends had laughed at it plenty when he took it to school. Bob Paris especially apt to tease in his new convertible.
But, the station wagon was Alex's and when he wasn't doing odd jobs for the Sheriff, he had been free all summer. It had been the first real taste of freedom he had felt. Going to summer parties and bond fires by the bay. Keith Summers having snuck beer from his dad and there was always someplace to go and do a whole lot of nothing.
But now, school started on Monday and he wasn't sure how much his dad would demand of his free time. His car had been like a deal with the devil at times. Alex unloaded the last box and went back outside with the dolly. The girl was in the window again. She wasn't dancing but she'd changed clothes. An oversized T-shirt that she must be using as a night gown. Her legs looking slightly flirtatious as the rest of her was hidden under the lumpy, ill fitting shirt.
"Alex, get in." the Sheriff said with a tone of weariness. Alex looked back at his father locking up the new White Pine Bay Sheriff's office.
"Hopefully, they'll be done with this place before Halloween." Sheriff Romero said bitterly. "My office looks nice. Doesn't it?"
Alex knew better than to argue. Dominic Romero had a private office now with two ways in and out in case he didn't want to see people. He would have his own receptionist now that the town was finally flushed with money. Alex didn't ask where the money came from. He already knew.
Just five years ago, the logging business went bust and people were losing their homes all over. White Pine Bay seemed doomed to become a ghost town. Then, like magic, money started rolling in. Summer people seemed to want to stay here permanently. Their luxury cars were accompanied with nicer homes than Alex had ever seen.
Alex glanced back at the girl in the window again and saw she was gone. He quickly jumped into the passenger seat before his father could snap at him again.