The World of Normal Boys Read online

  “I’m just asking a question.”

  “That’s enough!” Clark is resolute in his anger.

  “I don’t think about my father very much,” Dorothy says with finality. She turns off the water and rubs her hands on a towel. “Some things are better forgotten.”

  Robin picks at the casserole congealing on his plate. He looks at the empty beer cans, at the wine bottle his mother keeps reaching for. In group guidance, Mr. Cortez said that alcoholism gets passed down from generation to generation. Grampa Leo was a drunk—should he be worrying about his mother?

  Clark pushes himself up from the table. “I can’t keep my head on straight anymore.”

  “I’ll walk upstairs with you, Clark,” Stan says. “I’ve got some ideas about Jackson that I want to run past you. Physical therapy stuff. There’s this guy I know who’s selling equipment, very state-of-the-art stuff. I’ll tell you a little about it.” He continues talking as they leave the room.

  Dorothy returns to the table, to her wineglass. “Why don’t you turn in, too, Robin? I’m just going to drink myself to sleep down here.”

  Sitting on Ruby’s bed, unable to sleep, Robin hovers on the verge of a torrent of weeping. It feels like an itch around the edges of his eyes, like muscles knotted up under his cheekbones. But he stops himself from letting go—being strong means not crying. But not crying makes him seem like an unfeeling creep—he should cry out loud, wake the whole house so that everyone will know he feels sad about what’s happened to Jackson. The fact that he can’t makes him wonder if he is secretly happy Jackson is in danger. The thought spooks him; his skin tightens across his back. It can’t be true—sure, Jackson has always been a pest, but how could he be happy to see him in the state he is?

  A memory surfaces: family vacation in Washington, DC—a walk along the Tidal Basin; Robin lifting Jackson on his shoulders, Jackson plucking cherry blossoms, handing them back to Robin; the two of them presenting the pink bouquets to Dorothy and Ruby with a victorious flourish. It was explicitly forbidden behavior, and soon enough a park ranger was upon them. Clark was contrite, and reprimanded his sons for the benefit of the man in uniform—though later he took them all out for hot fudge sundaes, and they laughed together about the MacKenzie family’s scrape with the law.

  Why haven’t there been more days like this, with Jackson? Did they share the blame for their deficient brotherhood? Or was it just him, lacking an ingredient necessary to play his part? If this was TV, they’d be in and out of adventures on a weekly basis. He thinks of The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, the Bradfords on Eight is Enough. Older brothers are forever bothered by younger brothers; that annoyance is just part of the deal. But on TV they manage to work it out: the younger brother needs guidance only the older one can provide, or the older one gets in over his head and the younger saves the day with a clever, last-minute brainstorm. Every time he has wished Jackson could just be out of the way—even a passing, half-conscious thought like I wish I had my own bedroom—stares back at him now, accusing him, mocking him.

  Next to Ruby’s bed is a lamp in the shape of a ballerina: a knee-length pink tutu thick with white ruffles, a serene face dotted with lavender on each cheek. The frilly shade rises out of a column behind her neck. He flicks it on, looks around Ruby’s room. On the floor near the bed is the sketchbook she was drawing in this afternoon. The first few pages are very carefully shaded, every color as close to real as possible, pictures of trees and boats drawn inside the lines. He flips the pages, looking for a blank one, thinking if he can’t sleep maybe he’ll draw something himself, but he stops suddenly and snickers out loud. This page has two children in front of a house—their faces are purple and their arms are red and their clothes are just scrawls of darkness. “God, Ruby,” he says out loud, “didn’t know you could do modern art.” Each page that follows is the same: the faces bright red and magenta, the hair and clothes forest green and black and that shade of brown called burnt sienna. Every page is a little bit crazier, darker, with a steadily decreasing attempt at naturalism. The last one is entirely covered in black with Jackson written across the top in red. He tries to think of Ruby drawing in the book this afternoon; she had been so quiet, but the pictures are wild. If he hadn’t seen her sitting calmly at the foot of the couch, with Nana Rena dozing above her and the soap opera music warbling from the TV, he’d think she’d been throwing a temper tantrum while she drew this.

  He closes the book and slides it under the bed. The wind outside the window is curling around the trees, the whole night is beginning to frighten him. He does not want to sleep in this room.

  He tugs a blanket off the bed and wraps it around him and makes his way downstairs. When they were little, they’d play a game: Robin would drape a long blanket around him and pretend to be a bride with a long train attached to her dress, and Ruby and Jackson would creep along behind, hiding under the trailing material until they were “discovered,” at which point a chase would ensue. They would do this over and over, sometimes for hours, acting the same scene, laughing every time. The fun was in the discovery—sometimes they would trip him, sometimes rip the blanket off, sometimes jump out and yell, “Boo!” Sometimes he would just run very briskly “to the altar” and unmask them. Thinking of it now, Robin picks up speed through the living room so that the blanket flutters along, just above the surface of the carpet. He zips around the coffee table and into the dining room all the way to the window that looks out on the backyard.

  Todd Spicer’s bedroom light is on, a bluish rectangle through the trees. Robin tries to discern if the gray form he sees is actually Todd or some piece of furniture. He thinks of the binoculars his father keeps in his workroom in the basement—the ones he brought on their trip to Cape Cod a couple of years ago, where they tried to spot whales in the ocean. If Uncle Stan wasn’t in the basement, Robin could go down there right now and get the binoculars. What if Todd had binoculars too and caught him looking? The idea of it sends a shiver through him: if Todd caught him looking, that would mean Todd was looking too, which is as scary as it is exciting.

  He lets the blanket fall to the floor and sits on the couch in the living room. Nana Rena has left a row of votive candles burning on an end table in front of their school pictures. Jackson’s picture has been pushed closest to the front. P.G. make him better, Robin thinks. He doesn’t know what Nana expects from burning candles and prayers.

  “Robin?”

  He jumps.

  “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to startle you.” It’s his mother, coming in from the kitchen.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” he says guiltily.

  “I fell asleep at the kitchen table,” Dorothy says groggily, smoothing down her hair. “I was just sitting alone in the dark and the house was so quiet—well, next thing I know it’s two A.M.” She turns toward the mirror at the bottom of the stairs, across from the couch, and looks disapprovingly at her reflection. Her blouse hangs crookedly from her shoulders, the tail of it untucked. She pivots on her stocking feet. “Nothing like a good catastrophe to make you look like hell,” she says.

  Dorothy sits down next to him on the couch, rippling the cushions beneath him. He thinks about how heavy she is compared to him, looks down at his arms and sees his skinny wrists and fingers like delicate claws. Her breath has the unpleasant smell of a musky cork. His own skin is still vaguely clammy on his back and around his balls from the bike ride. The candles cast a glow on the two of them, and the rest of the room shakes in the shadows.

  “Those candles are creepy,” he says.

  “Well, maybe Nana’s got a connection or two we could use right about now.”

  “Yeah, P.G.,” Robin says and smiles at her. She smiles back and rests her hand on his shoulder and they sit like that for a moment, quietly.

  “I’m sorry I got everyone worried,” he says. “You know, with the bike ride and all.”

  “It was a bit too much excitement for the day.”

  “Now Dad’s mad at
me,” Robin says.

  “He’s just upset.”

  “He doesn’t have to take it out on me.” He wonders if his father would be crying nonstop if it was him in the hospital instead. A stab of something unpleasant hits him—jealousy? Is that the problem? Does he wish for something in common with his father, the bond that has been so natural for Jackson and Clark, a closeness that has always eluded him? “Does Dad think it’s my fault? Will you ask him if he thinks it’s my fault?”

  “No, I will absolutely not ask him that.” The admonishment in her voice surprises him. “Robin, I asked you to be strong.”

  “I don’t know what that means!” He hates that his voice sounds sulky, but he doesn’t know how else to convey his confusion to her.

  “It means that you have to be a son to your father. Help him out if he needs it. Don’t pester him with your every question.”

  “You usually want me to ask questions,” he mutters.

  “Well, don’t ask questions I can’t answer. In fact, don’t ask any right now because I don’t have any answers.”

  She pulls him to her, and he leans stiffly against her body. Her hand strokes his hair, but it does not comfort him. Her impatience feels like a betrayal. It confounds him more deeply than his father’s anger.

  Chapter Six

  He wakes up the next morning disoriented and aroused. It takes a few lengthy seconds to figure out that he is in the living room. He sits up and pulls the blanket around him, peers across the room so that he can see the clock over the dining room table. 8:15. No one woke him up, maybe they really don’t care if he goes to school or not. The sky is pale and bright through the crack in the living room curtains. A crow caws outside. A flash of a dream image comes to him: he is running past a house with a broken front porch toward a swimming pool with no water; he slides down into the deep end and talks to a boy—it was Scott, that kid from gym class in the van last night. What happened? His dick is half hard, and the dream of Scott is part of that. He leans back into the couch and closes his eyes again, trying in vain to remember more.

  He shakes his head, loosens a few long strands of hair stuck to his face. The dream is gone except for the picture of Scott. He reaches down and puts his fingertips on his underwear, squeezes his butt muscles so that his dick bobs against the fabric. A couple of seconds of this—bob, bob, bob—and he stops, not wanting to be caught touching himself in the middle of the living room.

  Upstairs, Ruby is stepping out of the bathroom. She’s wearing a dark dress he hasn’t seen on her since some night they all went out to a restaurant, probably six months ago.

  “Are you going to school?” he asks her.

  “No. Mom said I don’t have to.”

  Robin’s bedroom door opens and Nana Rena emerges, sliding a coat over one of her familiar dresses. “If it isn’t Rip Van Winkle,” she says.

  “How come no one woke me up?” Robin asks. “Where’s Mom?”

  “Your mother was poking and prodding every ten minutes with not a blink out of you; I would have thought you were dead and buri—” She flinches and cuts herself off with a wave of her hand. Robin bites on his lower lip at the word dead and at the blush on Nana’s cheeks after she caught herself saying it. Dead is not a word he thinks anyone is going to throw around in a joking way right now. Nana says, “Your mother is at the hospital. Your father is taking us to eight-thirty mass. Come on, Ruby. The house of the Lord awaits.”

  As they walk down the stairs, he hears Ruby saying, “I don’t wanna sit on the side with the bloody Jesus on the wall.”

  He slips into one of his favorite shirts—shiny and synthetic, with photos of a Parisian cafe repeated across the material—and a pair of white pants that look like jeans even though they are made of polyester. At the last minute he removes the pants long enough to take off his underwear; when he puts them back on, he studies the way the shape of his dick reveals itself under the fabric. Before he can debate whether or not this is OK, or why he’s even thought of it today of all days, he grabs his Trapper Keeper binder and East of Eden and heads downstairs.

  His father stops him in the kitchen as he moves toward the back door. “I’m gonna go with Victoria,” Robin tells him. He checks the clock in the shape of a teakettle over the table. 8:25. “She might have already left. I should hurry up.”

  Clark runs a hand through his hair. “I guess I should write you a note about yesterday.” He slides his hand across the countertop, searching out a pen. He pulls a piece of letterhead from the junk drawer under the dishrack and chews on the pen before writing. “Your mother usually does this,” he says as he writes. He crosses out a word or two and then finishes with the jagged scrawl of his signature.

  “Thanks,” Robin says, folding it in half.

  “I’ll see you this evening. Maybe I’ll take you over to the hospital tonight.” He holds Robin’s stare and looks away, unsure. “We’ll see.”

  “Great,” Robin says, trying to sound appreciative but unable to read his father’s expression—is Clark trying to say he’s sorry for exploding last night, or is he still laying down the law, making sure Robin knows who’s making these decisions?

  Robin crosses through the hedge to the Spicers’. Victoria is walking out her back door as he gets there. He feels as if he hasn’t seen her for weeks though it’s only been a couple of days. He’s wondering if it is possible she doesn’t know about Jackson, but then she holds open her arms. “Oh, my God,” she whimpers, pulling him into a hug. “I can’t believe it.” He wants to feel comforted by this but his books are poking into his ribs, so he pulls away. “You should have called me,” Victoria says, “Why didn’t you call me?”

  He can’t quite formulate an answer, can’t explain to her that he couldn’t tell anyone about Jackson’s fall without feeling like he’d be setting up evidence against himself.

  A horn honks. “Your mom won’t mind taking me, right?” Robin asks.

  “My mom’s sick. I’m getting a ride from Ethan—you know, Todd’s friend?” She puffs out her cheeks, an indication of how fat Ethan is, and smiles. Robin smiles back, glad to share the joke. She curls her hair over her ear. Her fingernails are painted pale blue. “C’mon,” she says. “Hopefully it won’t be too disgusting.”

  A smooth blue Chevy Malibu sits in the middle of the street. Ethan, in a denim jacket with a Harley Davidson logo on the sleeve, leans into the horn when he sees them.

  “Cut the horn action!” Victoria barks. “My mother will kill you if the neighbors start complaining.”

  “Who’s the dweeb?” Ethan asks, catching sight of Robin. Robin swallows but his mouth is dry. “Groovy shirt,” Ethan says sarcastically.

  “If you don’t have anything nice to say,” Victoria says, “stuff a Twinkie in your mouth.”

  Todd’s head pops out above the roof of the car. “Hey, Robin,” he calls out. “Big surprise.”

  “I couldn’t get a ride from my father,” he lies. He moves his books in front of his crotch, suddenly self-conscious about his underwear-free bulge.

  “Get in, get in,” Todd says calmly, jumping down to the street, his brown workboots slapping flat against the pavement.

  “Man, we gotta book,” Ethan says impatiently.

  Todd holds open the back door and waves Robin toward it.

  “What are you being so nice about?” Victoria asks suspiciously.

  Todd goofs up his mouth. “I’m just a little crazy sometimes. I get the urge to act nice. You ought to try it some time. You’ll live longer if you’re a nicer person.”

  “In that case you’ll probably be dead before you finish high school.”

  Robin smiles at Todd’s silly expression and slides in. Victoria follows and Todd slams the door forcefully behind her, squishing his face against her window and crossing his eyes grotesquely.

  “In case you didn’t notice,” Victoria says in a bored tone of voice, “I’m ignoring you.”

  Todd gets in the front seat and the car peels out, throwing
Robin into the side door.

  “Don’t speed,” Victoria says. She turns to Robin. “What’s the scoop with your baby bro?”

  Todd turns his head to listen, and Robin catches the attentiveness in his eyes before looking down at his books. “You know, he got fucked up,” he says, trying to formulate his answer in Todd’s language.

  “My mother heard it from Mrs. Delatore yesterday,” Victoria says. “So is his neck broken? I mean, that’s what she said.”

  “Hey, are you that kid who pushed his brother off the slide?” Ethan says excitedly.

  Robin feels his face drain of blood. “Who said that?”

  “Man, you are about as dumb as you are fat,” Todd says.

  Ethan slams on the brakes. “You wanna walk?”

  Robin gets thrown forward, and his father’s note slips off the top of his binder.

  “What’s that?” Victoria asks, scooping it up and reading it out loud.

  “‘To whom it may concern—’ God, doesn’t he even know your teacher’s name? ‘Robin MacKenzie missed school yesterday because of a sudden, unfortunate situation at home. Please excuse him from classes. I can provide details if necessary.’ Aren’t there two c’s in necessary?”

  “No,” Todd says and pulls the paper from her hand. “His name’s printed on the top. ‘Clark MacKenzie, Sales Analyst.’ Mighty professional don’t ya think?” Robin smirks—professional coming from Todd sounds like another word for boring. Todd hands him back the note and says, “He started to write ‘tragic,’ then crossed it out and wrote ‘unfortunate.’”

  “Jackson fell,” Robin murmurs quietly, folding the note small enough to slide into his back pocket. “It was an accident.”

  Todd lights a cigarette and blows smoke out his open window. Robin watches the gesture, the way Todd’s neck tenses when he sucks in, the way his lips keep the cigarette in place even as it looks like it might drop from his mouth.

  “I heard he had an operation and he’s in a coma,” Victoria says, her voice sounding gossipy to Robin.