*
A few summers back Norma and Ted moved into a development called Rancho de Caza. It was what they could afford and Ted promised they wouldn’t spend their whole lives living in a development. At the time, Rancho de Caza was not a gated community. Norma had insisted on that. But then there was a spate of burglaries, and after a thirty-eight-year-old mother from Lilac Lane was lashed to a kitchen chair with duct tape and thrown into her swimming pool, the board of Rancho de Caza changed their minds. Even though the woman lived. Now when Norma walks home she must stand in front of the guardhouse, wave to the man inside, and wait while he swings open two white wrought-iron gates big enough for an eighteen-wheeler. The gates make Norma feel like a mouse entering a giant’s city. They close behind her. She scurries down Day Lily Street before taking a left on Daffodil.
Rancho de Caza has certain rules, bylaws. Grass must be cut. No lawn ornaments bigger than one and one-half feet. No unapproved swing sets. No compost piles. Two trees maximum per yard. Norma and Ted got lucky. They have a nice tall sycamore that shades the Mediterranean roof tiles. All the houses in Rancho de Caza have Mediterranean roof tiles. The sycamore’s leaves are larger than Ted’s hand, so large a neighbor once complained that Ted and Norma should pay for his Guatemalan lawn guy because one of the development’s laws is: leaves must be raked, bagged, and thrown away once a week from October 1 to November 31. “They’re not my leaves,” the neighbor said. Norma and Ted stared blankly over the low fence that divided the properties, hoping if they ignored the matter it would go away.
Caza. What a bunch of idiots.
*
It’s not really the same old story: bored couple in suburbia. Norma loves Ted. He is very kind. He looks a bit like a news anchor, or maybe a local TV weatherman, a tennis pro. Handsome first, then well-groomed, then smart.
When Ted and Norma first met he was still living at home with his parents, growing hydroponic marijuana in the family basement. He was twenty-six at the time and made a living driving the local library’s bookmobile to the rougher parts of the city and out to the old folks’ home. Sometimes Norma would ride in the van with him. They’d get high in the bookmobile, flip through the children’s books together, and make out. Norma loved to watch Ted as he helped little redneck girls or senile old men pick out something good to read in the van where she and Ted had just been kissing. It all seemed so generous. People always left the van surprised. “You mean, I can just take this book?” And Ted would nod yes, yes, you can.
But then Ted turned twenty-seven, and two days after his birthday his father asked to have a word with Ted and his mother. Ted’s father confessed that he had another family, a whole other family, another wife, another house, and another kid, a girl, only she wasn’t a girl anymore, she was a woman. All these years, all those sales calls and business trips were lies. Even the two Christmases he’d claimed to be caught in Chicago snowstorms. He was lying. He was a few towns away at his other family’s house. Ted’s father said he was sorry. He said he wasn’t quite sure how things had gotten so out of control. Ted’s father said that the new sister was anxious to meet her sibling. Ted didn’t believe that for an instant. His father said he felt great. He’d been wanting to tell them for so long. He was relieved that the telling was over. Ted’s mother said Ted’s father was lower than the lowest species of worm and then threw him out of the house. “And if you ever think about coming back or even calling, don’t,” she said. “I’ll buy a gun and if I can’t get a gun I’ll just use a piece of broken glass to gouge your eyes out while you sleep.”
Ted woke up the following morning, went to the basement, and ripped up every single stalk of marijuana he had growing there. He took the plants out back to the leaf pile and set the whole thing on fire. Ted bought his first suit and filled out three applications for entry-level management positions, one at a wholesale imported food distributor, one at a textile company, and one at a home supply warehouse. He didn’t get any of the jobs, but the next week he went and filled out three more applications. Then he asked Norma to marry him, and Norma, also shaken by the news that someone’s entire life can be a lie, said yes. She loved Ted.
*
Last night Norma and Ted had chicken breasts, broccoli, and couscous for dinner. Later, when the development went quiet, Ted stepped outside. Norma didn’t know what he was doing out there—surveying the property for wild beasts or burglars—but when he came back he smelled like fresh air. Ted and Norma went to bed and held each other underneath the covers.
*
Home from the diner, she checks the messages. “Hi, Norm, are you there? Are you there? I guess you’re not there.” Outside, an airplane passes overhead, making a shadow on her back lawn. She watches it go and the house is quiet again.
Earlier she’d been surfing the Web, looking at a TTC, Trying to Conceive, chat room.
baby@43: thanks to clomid I tried to shove DH down the stairs yesterday.
sterile ms.: just found out health insurance won’t pay for my two $15,000 IVFs that didn’t work
wannabb: implantation bleeding? anyone?
baby@43: implantation bleeding is a myth spread by women who have no trouble conceiving. there’s no such thing, wannabb. that’s yer period
Women are mean to each other in the TTC chat rooms. Even Norma can get mean. She’ll type in, Good luck to someone, but she doesn’t mean it plainly. She means it more like Fat chance. You’re too old. Much older than me. You’re never going to have a baby.
She looks past her computer, out into the backyard. There is something in the tree. Something large and dark. It is a mass like cancer or a squirrel’s nest. She lets her eyes focus. And there it is, and she couldn’t be more surprised. It’s a beautiful hawk, a tremendous, beautiful, speckle-breasted hawk come to visit Rancho de Caza. In all the years that Norma has lived in this development she has seen goldfinches, blue jays, cardinals even, pigeons, sparrows, swallows, starlings, crows, grosbeaks, and wrens, but she has never seen a bird of prey. It’s preening its breast on a high branch. Norma can make out its bright yellow talons and beak, its long tail of secure feathers.
“What are you doing here?” Then, as certainly as if the hawk had answered her itself, she knows. “You’re here to tell me that I’m going to have a baby, aren’t you?” Norma says it out loud to confirm the bird’s meaning. She feels all the weight in her arms, all the gloom of getting her period disappear. “Thank you.” She’s sure of the sign, so she picks up the cordless phone to make it real.
“Ted Jonsen, please.
“Hi.
“You won’t believe it.
“No. There’s a hawk in the backyard.
“I know.
“Yeah, I’m sure. It’s huge.
“It’s huge.
“Nothing.