The World of Normal Boys Read online

  He stops a few feet from the counter. “Excuse me,” he says. “I’m here to see my brother.”

  She continues gazing at her paper until Robin thinks he should speak up again, and louder, and then with an unexpected flick she slaps the paper down on the counter. “Unbelievable,” she says, walking around the counter. She is wearing pale blue pants stretched tight across her wide backside. “Visiting hours are over, son,” she barks. “Wait over there. I’ll be right back after I talk to someone about this.” She points to a couch, not the nearest one, which makes little sense to Robin, but her face is stern and so he moves toward it. She narrows her eyes as if she has finally taken a close look at him. “And wipe your nose. Cripes, what’s a kid your age doing here on a school night?”

  He doesn’t have to answer her because she’s gone down a corridor.

  The doors swing open at the other end of the lobby and a couple enters. Before they get too close, Robin makes a quick decision and turns down a hallway. A sign near an elevator bank reads: INTENSIVE CARE, 2ND FLOOR WEST. He pushes the UP arrow and gets inside the silvery compartment. The ride to the second floor takes much longer than it seems like it should. His head spins. He imagines getting stuck between floors.

  When the doors open a man stands in front of him—it’s Harold, the nurse from last night. Robin lowers his head and tries to pass by, but Harold recognizes him.

  “Oh, hi,” Robin says, his voice deliberately casual.

  “Oh, hi,” Harold repeats with a tinge of sarcasm. “Just strolling around, huh?”

  “My brother’s room is on this floor,” Robin says.

  “Yes, I know. I was just there. Come with me.” Harold drops his arm across Robin’s shoulder and they walk together. “Must have been a pretty tough day.”

  “Well, I didn’t go to school or anything.”

  “Did you walk here?”

  “I rode my bike. It’s not very far.”

  Harold looks down at him as if he knows Robin’s lying but is going to play along with it a little longer. “You know, your brother’s really not up for visitors.”

  “My parents have been visiting all day.”

  “Yeah, they’re still here. Down in the cafeteria at the moment, I think.”

  “Well, I’ll just go and take a look at Jackson.”

  “Robin,” Harold says, stopping and turning Robin so that they’re face-to-face, “your grandmother called half an hour ago. Everyone’s been worried about you.”

  Robin feels suddenly defensive. “It’s a free country. I can see my own brother if I want to.”

  “Look, I’ll take you there, but I’m warning you, it’s not pretty. OK?” Harold’s face is serious now, and it frightens Robin. “He’s hooked up to a bunch of tubes and there are machines around the bed and he’s not really... awake. He’s not going to look like what you expect.”

  Robin manages a nonchalant shrug. “I can take it.”

  Harold guides him to the open doorway. “I’ll wait outside.”

  Robin peers into the room, which is lit only by a single fluorescent light above Jackson’s bed, and wants to cry immediately. It’s kind of like Harold described, with the tubes and machines and all, but somehow, when Robin formed that picture in his head, he didn’t imagine Jackson in the middle of it. Jackson’s head is propped up by a neck brace, half obscured by a pillow squishing in around his flattened hair. Bags of clear liquid hang from poles; stringy tubes snake toward Jackson’s body and disappear under yellow strips of tape against his skin. His face is swollen as if filled with too much blood, his eyes are closed, and his mouth is open at one side and sticky with drool.

  “Jackson?” he whispers. The room is silent except for a calm beep from one of the machines. He steps closer. The sheets across Jackson’s chest rise and fall. “Jackson?” He touches the edge of the bed and has the urge to shake it, to wake Jackson up. “I rode my bike here,” he says. “I got lost or I would have been here sooner. I got lost on Marble Road—you believe that?”

  Someone clears their throat behind him, but when he turns around it’s not Harold in the doorway, it’s his mother. She’s nearly in silhouette, the bright corridor behind her absent of detail.

  “You stubborn child,” she says, her voice raspy, weary. “I told you to stay home.”

  “I was going crazy at home. Why’d I have to stay there?” He backs up a step and bumps into a chair, which rubs sharply along the floor. The noise panics him, as if he might have broken something important, and he quickly sets the chair back in place.

  She walks into the room and curls her arms around him; his face gets pushed against her breasts; he is enveloped by the smell of cigarettes and powdery sweat. Just as he wants to pull himself free he is yanked away, fingers digging into his arm.

  His father’s blue-gray eyes stare at him, the skin on his forehead pinched, his lower lip quivering angrily.

  “Hey,” Robin says. “You’re hurting me.”

  “What the fuck are you trying to prove?” Clark says. Robin has never heard his father say “fuck” before and he can’t stop himself from smiling. The pressure from Clark’s grasp increases. “Do you think this is a game?”

  “Clark, don’t,” Dorothy says, pulling Robin back toward her.

  “Don’t you tell me don’t,” Clark says to her. He tugs Robin again. “I’ve got enough on my mind without having to worry about this one. What the hell is wrong with you, Robin? When we tell you to stay home, we mean, stay the fuck home.”

  “Let go,” Robin says, shaking his arm against the stiffness of Clark’s grip. He looks past his parents at Harold, who is standing in the hall staring at his feet.

  “Clark, enough. Please,” Dorothy’s voice is an urgent whisper.

  “I’ve had enough,” Clark says.

  “He just wanted to see his brother, Clark. You’re overreacting.”

  “Leave me alone!” Robin yells. Clark pulls harder on his arm until Robin is ripped from Dorothy, then spins him toward Jackson’s bed.

  Clark’s voice is steel. “Take a good look, OK. That’s your brother. He’s had an operation. They’ve put a pin in his neck to realign his spine. There’s been nerve damage. They don’t know yet if there’s been brain damage. There’s a lump the size of a baseball on the side of his head. One of his ribs was poking into his kidney. He’s got a fracture in his arm. You wanted to know? You wanted to see? Now you know.”

  “Why are you yelling at me?” Robin snaps back. He starts to say, “It’s not my fault,” but he’s not sure about that, he’s only sure he shouldn’t say it. Clark stares at him for a moment and then looks back at the bed. His shoulders drop. He lets go of Robin.

  The machine attached to Jackson beeps in time, oblivious to them all. Robin feels his own heart beating faster than the machine. He almost imagines a grin on Jackson’s blank face, laughing at their argument, laughing at Robin in trouble.

  Dorothy whispers, “Clark? Please, no more of this.”

  Clark shoots another look at Robin—Robin can still see the anger but now there’s no strength behind it, as if his father is melting in front of him. Clark mutters, “I’ve had it. I’m getting out of here. I’ll meet you at the car.” He pushes past Robin and Dorothy. Robin hears his father ask Harold if he can see the doctor once more. He hears their footsteps as they walk away. Somewhere in the hallway a wheel on a moving cart squeaks.

  Dorothy puts her hands on Robin’s shoulders and brings him back into her. She rests her cheek against his ear.

  “Mom—” is all he can say and then he shuts his eyes so tight he sees red and green.

  “Shhh,” she says, tightening her grip around him. “You don’t have to say anything, sweetie.” Robin’s legs are shaking. The tighter his mother holds him, the more he feels like he will collapse without her.

  They get to the parking lot before Clark. Robin unlocks his bike and they wedge as much of it in the trunk as they can. The front wheel hangs over the bumper like a monster trying to cra
wl out. They wait in the front seat with the engine running, a fumey smell wafting up from below their legs.

  The hospital doors whoosh open. The woman who was at the front desk when Robin first walked in hurries out. Her lips are moving, and she shakes her head side to side as if arguing with someone. Suddenly she stops and rummages through her purse, pulling out a pack of cigarettes, which she throws into a trash can. She shakes her fist at the building. Dorothy bursts out laughing.

  “Who is she?” she asks.

  “She’s the old bag at the front desk,” Robin says. “She was kinda rude to me.”

  “But what’s her story?” Dorothy asks with a sidelong glance to Robin.

  “Oh,” he says and thinks for a moment. The woman reaches her car, a big economy sedan with a dent in the back door. She kicks the front tire before she gets in. Robin smiles and says, “She’s got a house full of screaming kids waiting at home for her. All of them from different husbands. All of her husbands have left her and she’s miserable.”

  “Hmm,” Dorothy says. “Hard to believe she ever got a man at all with a crazy disposition like that.” Her voice has picked up some amusement, and Robin is encouraged.

  “Well, once upon a time she was a very beautiful rich girl in New York,” he says. “That kind that has a big party when they turn eighteen.”

  “Oh, a debutante. I always wondered what happens to debutantes after the glitter fades.”

  “Just one bad marriage after another, all of them want her for the money and then one day she winds up talking to herself—”

  “—At a hospital in New Jersey, no less,” Dorothy says. She flicks lint off her coat. “All roads lead to New Jersey for the lonely hearted.”

  Robin senses the weariness creeping back into his mother’s voice, so he picks up speed. “But see, first she lived for a long time in Paris, where she had a mansion on a hill by a cathedral and a view of the Eiffel Tower. And then the troubles started. Her kids were ungrateful and spent all her money. And none of the husbands would stick around; they had French mistresses they took to little cafes along the Sane River.”

  “The Seine,” Dorothy corrects.

  “Yeah, the one Gene Kelly dances along in the movie. What was that movie called? We watched it on TV that time?”

  Dorothy’s expression freezes. “There’s your father.”

  “An American in Paris, right?”

  “Let’s give him some peace and quiet.”

  Robin slumps down in the seat and sits on his hands.

  Clark makes his way to the car with his head down. He gets in and shifts into gear with hardly a pause. As they pull out of the parking lot he says, “So Dr. Glade is pleased with the operation after all.”

  “Really?” Dorothy asks. Robin catches the surprise in her voice. “There’s something new?”

  “Just that his blood pressure is back up, and there’s an indication that the kidney damage is less than they thought.” He sighs and shakes his head. “They want to do that new scan tomorrow—the CAT scan.”

  “So we’ll know for sure then,” Dorothy says.

  “There’s no ‘for sure’ at this point,” Clark says. “But there’s nothing more for us to do there tonight.” He rests his hand on Dorothy’s leg. “I’m about to pass out. I can’t think straight.”

  “We’ll all be better off at home for a little while,” Dorothy says.

  Robin watches his mother put her hand on his father’s. Neither of them says anything to him. As they turn onto Tappan, the picture of Jackson in the hospital room forms again—Robin tries to imagine a pin in Jackson’s spine, or a rib puncturing his kidney. He sees damaged nerves like frayed ropes under his brother’s skin. If Jackson was in the car with them right now, he’d be pulling some rowdy stunt in the back seat or blabbing about something he saw on TV, driving them all crazy; for the first time ever, Robin finds himself longing for Jackson’s obnoxious, noisy presence. He leans his arm into the car door, pushing against it to stop the tingles where his father’s fingers had pressed so strongly. He stares through his window as they pass through town, all of the stores closed, all of the lights dimmed. He pretends he’s not in this car, he pretends he’s riding on a bus next to strangers who are talking about something that’s none of his business.

  Four of them sit at the kitchen table picking through leftover olive loaf sandwiches and string bean casserole with dried onion rings. Robin watches his mother, his father, and Uncle Stan struggle to talk around Jackson’s condition; they talk about the weather, the Yankees’ World Series victory, the latest scandal in the Carter administration, a report on the news about teenagers doing cocaine. The conversation keeps shifting gears and then stalling. Stan tries to juice up the conversation with his generalizations and pronouncements, but Clark and Dorothy don’t take the bait. Dorothy refills her wineglass several times, and Clark seems to be sleeping with his eyes open.

  Robin feels something burdensome about the fact that he is the one person at this table related to everyone else by blood, that he might be the only one among them who can see them all clearly because something inside of him is a piece of something inside of the rest of them. When his father starts crying again, Stan shoots Clark a look of such pity that Robin decides he has to get away. He announces he’s going to bed.

  “Not in your room, you’re not,” Stan says. “Ruby and Nana are in there.”

  “What do you mean?” Robin asks.

  “Something about keeping Jackson’s bed safe from demons,” Stan says casually, as if it makes sense, though Robin can’t think of anything crazier he’s heard all day.

  He looks at his mother. She twists her mouth as if preparing to explain. Robin says, “You let her sleep in Jackson’s bed?”

  “Just for tonight. She’s so upset, and she wanted to be in the same room as Nana.”

  “What do you mean, ‘keeping away demons?’ ” Robin asks.

  Dorothy says quickly, “She’s been praying with Nana all night, and she got it in her head that she can make Jackson better if she . . . I don’t know, sends out a message that his bed is being kept warm.” Dorothy frowns as if she knows this explanation makes little sense.

  “So I’m supposed to sleep in Ruby’s room?” he asks.

  Clark speaks up firmly, dabbing his cheeks. “Robin, don’t make a stink about it.”

  Robin sinks into his chair, his face burning. A silent tension stretches through the room. I wish I could read minds, Robin thinks.

  Stan says suddenly, “Hey, Dottie, remember that time Dad fell off the roof? The old drunk.”

  “Oh, God that was awful. I was thinking about that today.”

  “We thought he was a goner, but he got better.” Stan gets up and pulls a can of Budweiser from the refrigerator, which Robin thinks Stan must have bought himself, since there’s never any beer in the house. Stan doesn’t return to his seat, and his gaze rests on the far wall, as if he needs to stand up and concentrate to bring these memories forth. “For a while we were home alone all the time, Mother at the hospital every day. We stayed up all night planning on running away to Canada, remember that?”

  “We did?” Now Dorothy stands up as well, moving to the sink and running water over dirty dishes.

  Robin asks, “Should I do those for you, Mom?”

  Dorothy doesn’t answer him. Her brow is furrowed. “Stan, I don’t think it happened that way.”

  “Sure, we were going to be runaways.”

  “What was I thinking?” Dorothy asks. “That I was going to take care of you? We were what, about seven and eight years old?”

  “We figured Mother couldn’t take care of us since she was so preoccupied with him in the hospital.”

  “Ha!” Dorothy exclaims with a force that surprises Robin. “We were probably just looking for a good reason to get away. Mother was such a taskmaster. When I think of how much laundry I did, and by hand.” She turns to Robin. “No washer-dryer set back then, no dishwasher, none of that at all.”


  “We used to stick together, you and me,” Stan says, still not looking at Dorothy.

  Dorothy frowns into the sink. “That was a long time ago.”

  Robin sits fascinated, listening to this pieced-together tale, sensing how impossible it is for the two of them to really talk to each other. This is more information than he’s ever heard about his mother’s relationship with her brother, and it’s just a peep. The door to their past is only slightly ajar, and he senses his mother is ready to slam it shut again.

  Stan guzzles from his beer can. He wipes his mouth with his sleeve as he speaks. “I’ll tell you one thing. If Dad had died that time, we’d of all been spared a lot of crap. It only got worse after that.”

  “Stan, that’s morbid,” Dorothy says, but her voice is too weary to really convey disapproval. “Don’t let Mother hear you talking that way.”

  “Ah, she’s used to it. She knows I couldn’t stand the bastard. The louse. If I had a buck for every time he belted me ...”

  She moves the dishes around in the sink, not speaking.

  “Come on, Dottie. You feel the same way.”

  Robin can no longer hold back his curiosity. “Do you, Mom? Did Grampa Leo belt you, too?”

  From his silent corner of the table, Clark speaks up. “Robin, give your mother a break, would you?”