The Woman Who Tried To Be Normal

By Anna Ferrara

In 1975, Helen Mendel married a widower and aircraft engineer, moved into his suburb in Los Angeles, 375 miles away from Area 51, and got herself merrily settled into a life of domestic bliss with nothing but her husband's pleasure on her mind.

Ethel Ashlock, wife of her husband's colleague, a depressed alcoholic addicted to Valium with unfulfilled dreams of becoming a pilot, hates her on sight. She thinks Helen's just another boring, brain-washed housewife and doesn’t make any effort to hide how much she detests her.

She doesn't realise Helen is not as commonplace as she appears; that she has synaesthesia—the ability to see sounds, hear images and taste feelings—and a past she's not telling anyone, not even her husband, about.

Things change when Helen, having tolerated enough of Ethel's persistent hostility, lifts her veil of pretence. Ethel soon finds herself blackmailed, frightened, and also... irresistibly intrigued by her new neighbour.

She becomes obsessed with getting Helen to like her and soon discovers they have more in common than she previously thought. Neither of them believe their husbands are truly aircraft engineers, for one, and neither of them believe Helen’s husband’s former wife, Violet, actually killed herself in the year before...

Together, the two women work to uncover the truth about Violet’s sudden death, until they discover the truth, not out there, but closer than either of them ever thought possible...

About the series:
Those Strange Women is a series of six books about the lives of six ‘unusual’ women over nine decades. Amidst changing attitudes towards women and homosexuality, the women grow, adapt and find their own ways of existing in a world in which they don’t quite belong. A few of them learn to love but most learn to hate; a few of them fail to thrive but most survive and develop a taste for revenge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anna Ferrara
• Release date: Sep 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463237540

Anna Ferrara

Anna Ferrara is a novelist who specialises in plot twists, horror and lesbian characters. Strong, independent women feature in all of her novels because she often finds herself mesmerised by them in real life. You can read more about her work and person at annaferrarabooks.com

Book preview

Chapter 1

6 June 1975, Saturday

I have synaesthesia. You probably don’t know what that means so I’ll tell you—I see sounds, hear images and taste feelings. What does that feel like? I can’t say. I’m not good with verbal language. But once, when someone asked if it were like a four-dimensional kaleidoscopic musical that never ends, the taste of apple appeared in my mouth. Apple is what I taste when something feels right so my guess is that that might have been a relatively accurate description of it. I can’t say for sure though. And, frankly, I’ve never really tried to.

People don’t ask about what they don’t know of so by not telling anybody I have synaesthesia, I save myself from a great deal of trouble. Always. When I married Hank Baker in the summer of ‘75, at the church he married and buried his former wife in, every person in attendance thought I was absolutely normal because I said nothing about what I could see, hear and taste. I didn’t even tell Baker. Not one person knew of synaesthesia, much less suspected I had it, and that was perfection. Just how I like it.

Had I told the guests I could tell the pastor had gotten terribly bored during the sermon because I could see his whole person becoming monotone and indistinct in front of my eyes, they would have thought of me as insolent and mentally disordered. More so if I told them I could also tell they were lying when they said I was lucky to be married to Baker because I could see purple outlines of long ovals appearing over their eyes, mouths, hands and feet whenever they said so.

I knew what to expect because I had spoken about synaesthesia before, when younger, dumber and much less experienced in the ways of the world, and it had brought me nothing but trouble.

Early on, I learned, the hard way, that most people—that is ninety-nine point eight nine seven five two percent of people—do not have any clue how to react to a person with synaesthesia. Disbelief is what usually happens first, followed by doubts about the stability of the synaesthete’s brain. Fake concern often follows, then gossip, then jokes, and it always ends with ostracism. Always. In a bad year, talks of ‘treatment’ might even occur. The only way to never end up there is to, as people always say, ‘make a good first impression’. That is, tell people only what they want to hear. Speaking the way people expect you to is the only way you’ll ever get them to let you into their hearts and homes and treat you no differently from the ones they love and care about.

The only way.

At the lunch reception after the wedding ceremony, at the garden at the back of Baker’s church, I did just that. I told all the people who came to talk to me, all of whom were friends or family of Baker, that my hobbies were knitting, baking, cooking, looking after children and keeping my home clean.

I did so because I knew, from experience, how easy it is for most people to relate to women who enjoy those things. I knew I would get nods and smiles and hear the soothing sound of flowing water when looking at their faces. If they replied with a ‘me too’ or a ‘you’re exactly like my wife’ or ‘mum’ or ‘grandma’ afterwards, I would see pinkish-orangish clumps of floating dust come out of their mouths along with the sound of their words, and feel each and every one of the bits wafting past my cheeks with gentleness.

Every one of them wanted me to tell them how Baker and I met and fell in love. They couldn’t understand why a thirty-nine year old woman would fall in love with a man eleven years her senior, I suppose. It was somewhat novel back then. I told them all about it anyway, in great detail, because I knew most people liked people who shared information about themselves readily. Especially when they wore a toothy, pretty smile while sharing too.

Baker and I met in Florida, I said, where I was from, six months before he proposed. It was my first day of work at the resort he happened to be living at while on holiday alone, and I had run up to him and hugged him tight for five whole minutes, thinking he was an old friend of mine. When I realised my mistake, I told them, I let go. But it was already too late. Baker had already decided he wanted me clinging on to him that way for as long as he lived.

Everyone laughed at my story, as I suspected they would, and liked me that little bit more afterwards. I knew because I could hear Bach’s Prelude In C Major in my ears when looking at them look at me and see pink bubbles of various sizes bubbling out of their mouths when they spoke to me. That is how friendliness looks and sounds like to me. That is how I know when I have made a good first impression.

One good impression isn’t enough, unfortunately. To get a positive image of myself solidified in the minds of Baker’s guests, I knew I was going to have to keep working at it. I worked especially hard at winning over the women who lived on Baker’s street because I knew I needed to get myself some friends. People are more likely to think of a woman as normal if she has a close-knit group of female friends. I was not from California, had never lived in California, knew nobody, so I knew I had to take every friend I could get.

When I saw pinkish-orangish clumps of dust wafting past my cheek each time I spoke of knitting with Shirley, Virginia and Gladys, I made sure I sounded like a woman obsessed with yarn till the dusts coming out of their mouths morphed into those pink bubbles of various sizes, crashed into my eyes, ears and flesh, and covered me in pink splotches. When I saw murky, dull green splotches—the shapes of disgust—appear when I spoke of knitting with Lynda, May and Allison, I ran through the gamut of topics most women would be interested in till I found the ones that made those pink bubbles appear from their mouths.

Shopping and fashion.

My efforts paid off. Towards the end of the wedding, by the time the buffet spread I had selected for Baker’s guests had been mostly cleared out, I had gotten almost all of the women from Baker’s street thinking of me positively. All, but one.

She was a tricky one. She moved away each time I tried to walk up to her and made me hear the bang of a gunshot every time she rested her dark eyes upon me—the sound of a look of pure hate.

Who’s that? I asked Ariel, Baker’s twenty-two-year-old daughter, when the gunshots began sounding like sustained, rapid fire and I was beginning to taste lemons—a taste that told me I was feeling the exact opposite of apples.

Who? she asked, lifting her head with its light brown curls up from the dessert table we had been filling our plates at.

The one in the black and white dress, I said.

The one who hates me on sight, I would have said, had I not known any better. The one who must also be feeling a little ill because whenever I see her not looking at me, I hear the whooshing of swaying wind—the sound of a nauseas human being. The only woman with no drink or plate in her hand? I said instead. The one over at the drinks counter. Smoking.

That woman was skinnier than me, in a dress that looked better suited for a funeral, with a bouffant of dirty brown hair at the top of her head. Lynda, May and Allison were in a circle with her, with half-filled plastic plates and cups in their hands and colourful dresses over their bodies, looking deep in animated conversation. They were too far away for me to hear properly but in my ears, I could hear the buzzing of static electricity as I watched them all—a sound that informed me one or more of them was feeling bored in secret, though I could not tell which one.

Oh, Charlie’s wife, Ariel said. Your neighbour. She used to come round a lot but not since… you know.

Ariel’s face turned very blue the instant she said the words ‘you know’ and I began hearing the screech of a misplayed note on a violin coming from her right after—the sound of a sad human being.

I changed the subject. Quickly. I hated the sound of sad human beings because it always got under my skin the way long nails screeching against a chalkboard did. Also, I didn’t want Ariel associating negative feelings with my presence, as people always seemed to do, subconsciously, with enough time. I wanted her, most of all, to have a positive image of me, so I asked about that fine young man she had come with and pretended to be immensely interested in knowing all the details of how they met and fell in love, what they wanted to do together in the future and what she thought of him.

My distraction worked, as I knew it would. Ariel’s face stopped being blue and instead became swathed by a layer of shimmering pink and gold sparkles. She began telling me all sorts of things about herself and that young man, none of which I find interesting enough to want to repeat.

Though I pretended to be listening intently, like I knew every good stepmother should be, I wasn’t. Not really. When I wasn’t thinking, once again, how Ariel might have been the talk of town had she just watched her weight like other girls her age, I was thinking about how to get that one woman who didn’t have a positive image of me to think more positively of me.

Every time I had the chance, when I could tell Ariel would be too caught up in her own story to notice where my eyes were going, I stole glances at the drinks counter twenty-seven metres away from my feet.

Vociferous, cutting gunshots I heard, every single time.

Chapter 2

16 June 1975, Monday

Baker and I went to Hawaii for our honeymoon the day after our wedding. We spent the next week mostly without shoes, doing a whole lot of what newly-weds were supposed to do, within our hotel room and out—got ourselves all tanned and salty, learned to use chopsticks, dined on catamarans, fed wild birds, watched porpoises and killer whales perform, and we shopped, just like everybody else.

By Sunday evening, we were back in Northridge, Los Angeles, resting from our days of fun in the two-storey suburban house Baker called home. The house had four bedrooms, spacious living spaces, a two-car garage, a large, well-manicured entertainer’s back yard, yet we were the only ones in it because Ariel had gone back to Radcliffe where she was working towards a degree in mathematics.

I didn’t understand why she would want a degree, nor did Baker when I asked him, because the jobs available for women in Northridge didn’t require further education. Baker said it had been her mother’s idea. He presumed there must have been a boy she planned on marrying who wanted his future wife to be able to talk mathematics with him and raise sons who would be good at mathematics from an early age, who might have convinced her doing so would be a good idea. That, her degree might be good for.

I believed him. I had no degree myself, and frankly, never saw the need for one. Now that I was married, my job, before bearing and raising children, was to look after my husband and his house. That was enough for one person to do in a day. I could barely even finish properly cleaning the entire house as it was and couldn’t understand why some women chose to fit employment into their twenty-four hours too. It wasn’t like jobs for women paid very well either. Women got paid half what men did for the same amount of time spent so it didn’t seem sensible to be doing it.

Monday morning, we got started on the routine Baker had done with his former wife for almost three decades, up till the point she passed away. It was a routine Baker enjoyed and wanted and it would be the routine he and I would share till the day he retired, he said.

My job was to have work clothes and breakfast prepared for him at 7am sharp every Monday morning. Breakfast was to be in the breakfast nook in the kitchen where the morning sun would come in. He would get the seat facing the windows that looked out into the back yard and I was to sit myself opposite him, facing the kitchen wall. Breakfast had to be big, complete with freshly-squeezed orange juice, browned sausage links, scrambled eggs, grapefruit halves, coffee and milk. I was to have the paper neatly set down on his side of the table, in case he felt like reading, and set a pack of cigarettes next to it too, in case he felt like smoking.

I want us to have Charlie and wife over for dinner on Friday, Baker told me at breakfast that Monday, with the suitcase containing a week’s worth of work clothes, sleepwear and toiletries next to the side of his chair, just as he wanted. It’s about time this house got back to having dinner guests.

From the moment he said the words ‘got back to’, Baker’s face became a shade of blue that reminded me of the deepest parts of the sea in Hawaii. It was the same shade of blue Ariel always turned into whenever someone mentioned her mother. It turned his grey eyes, skin and eyelashes blue. The blue travelled up his greying head of light brown, curly hair then down the length of his 1.8m long, lean and well-built body so his entire person, and even his clothes, became all blue. I began to hear those screechy misplayed violin notes shriek in my ears when looking at him so I, promptly, promised to speak with Charlie’s wife about it. He was expecting me to. I could tell.

Thanks, honey, Baker said as the blue began to disperse from his clothes, skin, hair and eyes and allowed him to resume looking normal-coloured again. And great effort with breakfast but could you get more salt in the eggs next time? And get the sausage crispier? I prefer crispy sausage.

Of course, honey, I replied, even though I hated crispy anything. Excessive texture was a tad much for my sensitive senses and sometimes left me a little disorientated but I didn’t say so because I knew a good wife never bored her husband with personal complaints. Baker’s mother told me so. She had given me a book titled ‘The Guide To Being A Perfect Wife’ as a wedding present and had gone through the key points it discussed on the afternoon after our wedding, right before she went home to New Mexico. It had helped her become a better wife and mother, she said, and she hoped it would help me too.

A normal good wife was all I wanted to be, so I smiled, told Baker I’d try better, and chewed my flawed eggs with my mouth closed. In silence, another trait of a good wife, apparently, I watched him clear out, in under five minutes, the breakfast that had taken me almost an hour to prepare and said nothing about the amount of washing up I would have to do next.

When Baker thanked me again and got up to leave without even touching the grapefruit I had rinsed, dirtied a chopping board and knife to cut, and served in a fresh bowl with a spoon that would now also require washing, I abandoned my half-finished breakfast to kiss him on the mouth and got his suitcase, coat and work shoes in front of him. When he walked to the garage, I paid no notice to the paper and cigarettes he hadn’t touched, or the juice he hadn’t finished, or the mess he made when his knife fell on the table, walked with him and waved goodbye in an enthusiastic manner I was certain his mother would have approved of.

Charlie came over from next door with his suitcase in hand while Baker was tossing his suitcase into the boot of his black, two-doored Gentlemen’s Chevy, so I kissed him on the mouth again, just so Charlie would be able to see what a good wife I was.

Charlie—three inches taller than Baker, bespectacled and just as old as Baker was but less good-looking—averted his very blue eyes when he saw us kiss. He wished me a very good morning and a good week ahead as he tossed his suitcase into the back seat and got in the front with Baker. He was dressed exactly as Baker was, in a conservative work suit made of dull colours.

They were aircraft engineers for a local aircraft company, Baker said, which meant they both spent the work week flying out to various airports to test aircraft far away from home. Since Charlie lived next door, they carpooled to work every Monday morning and returned together, just in time for dinner, every Friday evening. During the week, while at work, they flew planes and didn’t touch their cars till it was time to go home on Friday so it was more economical to just drive one.

I waved hard as they pulled out, with a grin held long enough to make my cheek muscles burn. As I did so, I noticed a young woman standing right outside Charlie’s front door, waving in rhythm with me while holding his three-year-old son, Daniel, who was also waving his tiny, fat hand in rhythm with me.

She was rather short, possibly only 1.6m in height, had a longish, skinny face and an equally longish skinny body. She had been waving at Charlie and Baker but began waving at me too when she saw me looking. There was a big smile on her face that made me hear Bach’s Prelude in C Major.

I had no idea who the woman was. She hadn’t been at our wedding nor had Baker ever mentioned her. What I did know was that she wasn’t Charlie’s gunshot-shooting wife. Seeing her there made me realise Charlie’s wife wasn’t where she was supposed to be.

Not anywhere in sight. Not behind the door or any of their large windows.

I thought that odd. What sort of wife does that? What sort of woman lets her husband go off for a full week without bothering to wave him goodbye?

Baker would be furious if I ever behaved that way, I knew. And rightfully so, I thought.

Chapter 3

16 June 1975, Monday

Charlie’s house was to the left of Baker’s, almost exactly the same size and somewhat identical, only mirrored. The key difference? It had been painted avocado green whereas Baker’s was peachy orange.

Both front doors were less than a minute apart if you went by foot. The neighbourhood they sat in was peaceful, idyllic, very gentle on the senses, with fruit trees on every corner, trimmed lawns, crack-free sidewalks, with just enough sunlight to make everything look pretty, yet, as I walked over with a huge plate of frosted fruitcake bars in my hands, I tasted only extremely sour lemons.

Many years before, I had come into contact with many people just like the woman I baked those frosted fruitcake bars for—people who hated the sight of me, who made the sound of gunshots ring in my ears every time they looked my way, just because. I tried, at first, to change how they felt about me, but no matter what I did, I never succeeded. Every single time, they kept on hating me. No matter what. Just because.

The thought of having to try again with another one of those people was making the sourest of lemons ooze out of the glands at the back of my mouth and the bottom of my mouth was filling up with saliva because of it. It was the taste of a very bad case of nerves and it was making my face scrunch up ever so slightly too, against my will.

As I knocked on Charlie’s wood-coloured double doors, the lemons in my mouth began tasting more like sauerkraut. A really sour sauerkraut—my way of knowing I was feeling fear. My jaw muscles began to ache. I realised I had been clenching them with a great force the whole way over.

Even so, I remained on Charlie’s front porch with my plate of fruitcake bars in hand. I knew I had to at least try. It was what Baker wanted.

Charlie’s front door opened. I prepared myself for gunshots and resisted my urge to hold the plate of fruitcake up in front of my face defensively, then relaxed when I realised I was hearing Bach’s Prelude in C Major instead of gunshots.

It wasn’t Charlie’s wife before me but that much younger woman I had seen in the morning, waving Charlie away with his son on her hip. Her eyes were the same brown her hair was and, despite not having any make up on, she had a freshness about her that only really young women ever had. Face to face, I could see she was possibly of Mexican descent and most likely the nanny because Charlie’s three-year-old was on her hip once again like he were an integral part of her identity.

Oh-lah, the three-year-old said, the moment he rested his eyes on mine. He was a chubby, baby version of his father and had the same dark brown hair, thoughtful blue eyes and luminous fair skin. There was nothing of his tanned, bony, gunshot-shooting mother in him. He too sounded like Bach’s Prelude in C Major to me.

I tasted marshmallows when looking at him and found myself grinning back when he grinned at me.

You’re supposed to say ‘hello’, Danny, the young Mexican woman holding him said patiently, in Spanish-accented English. A long, thin green line appeared in front of her mouth as she spoke. No more ‘oh-lah’ your Papa said.

Hello, the three-year-old said in response, while bouncing merrily on the Mexican woman’s hip and emitting numerous pink bubbles from his mouth. He sounded as Mexican as she had.

Hi, Danny! I said, in the most sunshine-y voice I could put on. Would you like some Treasure Chest Bars? I baked too many. Would you and your mummy like some?

See!

Mrs Ashlock’s gone to the mall, Mrs Baker, the Mexican woman said, with one long white rectangle stretched over both her eyes—an indicator of subservience. She’ll only be back at five.

Not for another two hours. I see. I guess I’ll have to go look for her there then. Here, have these Treasure Chest Bars anyway. Best to eat them while they’re still warm.

Kay bweno! the three-year-old yelled.

The Mexican woman nodded and took the plate I offered her. She’s having tea with friends, Mrs Baker, she said afterwards, with that white rectangle still over her eyes. Try Anna Miller’s Pies.

I thanked her and in that moment noticed the blueish-purplish-reddish patch at the back of her left cheek, right under the white rectangle over her eyes. The patch ran from the end of her cheekbone all the way to the bottom of her jaw. Unlike the rest of my synaesthetic visuals, it did not look somewhat translucent, nor was it in any way like a layer of filter between my eyes and the world. It did not change nor did it ever go away. Instead, it was fixed into her skin and solid.

The patch was real. A real… bruise. Possibly the result of a fall or, given the shape and size of it, another stronger, bolder, human being. Usually male.

I looked up into her eyes, waved at them both and went right into Baker’s garage without offering the words of concern I knew she would have greatly appreciated.

When I saw her see me looking