Free Entering Normal by Anne Leclaire

and sets them on the dresser, the rustling of clothes as he undresses. The sound of a drawer opening as he takes out his pajamas. The click of the switch on the bedside lamp. The long sigh he always gives as he climbs into bed, as if letting out an extra breath he’s held all day. She pictures him slipping between sheets he won’t notice are fresh, being careful to stay on his side of the bed, even though she is not yet there. She can imagine the scent he brings to the bed, a smell that recently has altered. Body chemistry betrays us, she thinks. It reveals every change. Doctors should pay more attention to this.
    She remembers smells: the clean milky smell of Todd as an infant, his firm little body perfumed with the intoxicating scent of baby sweat, the occasional acidity of spit-up; then later, when he turned from toddler to boy, the scent had sharpened to a childish sweat, a smell that held the fresh richness of wind and sun, like laundry just taken in from the line. And later still, the teenage years when he’d come home from the practice field wrapped in a serious, manly smell. Vibrant and salty and strong.
    And Ned. How she once loved the scent of him. Coccooned in his arms, she would inhale the odor seeping from his pores, drinking it in as if she could never get enough. Lately there has been an acrid smell that reminds her of her father, a sourness that hangs in the air around his skin. Again it brings home to her that Ned is getting older.
    She lifts a forearm to her nose, inhales. Her skin smells dry, like something stored in tissue.
    SHE OPENS THE DOOR, GOES OUT TO THE HALL, TO TODD ’ S room. She stands for a moment at the threshold.
    After the accident, she would come here every night. She believed the strength of her love, her connection to her son, couldn’t be sheared, not even by death. She believed that somehow he would come to her. If you believe enough, it can happen. So she sat in his room waiting, holding on to something of his—a piece of his clothing, a favorite toy, once his toothbrush, another time a sweat-stiffened sock she could not bring herself to throw away or launder.
    Now she continues down the hall, past their room. The sound of Ned’s snoring drifts out to her. He has left a night-light on at the top of the stairs, and she uses its faint glow to navigate her way down the steps. In the kitchen, she flips on the overhead light. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the harsh brightness. Her empty laundry basket sits by the back door, a reminder that the wash is still on the line. Ned has left his dishes in the sink, and she reconstructs his meal from the traces. Toast, a can of Campbell’s Hearty Man Vegetable Beef Soup, a wedge of leftover tart cherry pie.
    There is one slice left, and she warms it in the microwave—another appliance she distrusts, all those invisible, powerful waves doing who knows what. She eats standing at the counter, letting the cherry filling sit in her mouth with agreeable sourness. When she is finished, she fills the sink with water, squirts in detergent, submerges her hands to their chore.
    After she has rinsed the last plate, she checks the back door. Ned has already locked it. Thirty-five years ago, when they first moved into this house, neither of them locked a door, but Normal has changed a lot in three decades. Now, in addition to the Yale, they have a dead bolt on both their front and back doors.
    She listens to the familiar creaking of the house as it settles into sleep. The droning of the refrigerator, the deeper hum of the furnace, the scratching of a rose briar against the kitchen window. They should be cut back, before the deep frost. Another chore for Ned.
    â€œFoolish of us to keep this place,” he told her over dinner last night. “It’s too big for the two of us. Too much upkeep.” They were eating roast pork, and when he said that about the house being too big for them, the piece of meat she