The World of Normal Boys Read online

  The hospital is calm this evening. Dorothy leads the way, waving at the reception desk as she passes. Robin holds Ruby’s hand as they walk down the corridor. She is silent, wide-eyed. It’s her first time seeing Jackson, and he’s worried that she’ll freak out. Sweat coats their palms. Ruby holds a little bunch of hothouse carnations in her free hand. Dorothy grabs on to Clark’s arm, but to Robin it reads as though she is trying to steady him. Clark’s footsteps have a stumbly, exhausted quality.

  Jackson looks the same as the last time as far as Robin can tell. Maybe a little less injured—as if the hospital staff has been doing a good job making him appear healthy, though not any more alive. It would be hard for Jackson to look alive in this condition, because Jackson alive is Jackson wild and moving and talking and driving you crazy. Anything short of that is abnormal.

  A nurse is at Jackson’s bedside. She turns and smiles tenderly at them as they enter. “He’s being a very good boy,” she says.

  “Yes, well, the reports aren’t getting any worse, ” Dorothy responds dryly. The nurse’s smile freezes, and the muscles in her face go tight as if she’s trying to stay sympathetic despite Dorothy’s bluntness. At times like this, Robin is so glad for his mother’s ability to take the upper hand through simple disapproval. The hospital is supposed to be healing Jackson, not turning him into a well-scrubbed “good boy.”

  Clark crouches down next to Ruby. “Why don’t you say something to him? I’m sure he’ll hear it.”

  Ruby steps to the bedside and speaks in a strong voice, as if she’s reciting from a podium. “I’ve been sleeping in your bed, Jackson. I hope you don’t mind. I pray for you all the time. Nana does, too. I bet the angels are working on getting you better right now.” Ruby speaks with an urgency none of them are used to.

  “That’s good,” Clark says, laying his hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m not done.”

  “OK, but not too much more, dear,” Dorothy says.

  Clark shoots Dorothy a scowl. “Leave her be.”

  Ruby lays the flowers on the bed. Her hands now free, she lays them on Jackson’s stomach and prays. “Jesus, Sister Margarita said you loved the little children, so please make my brother better.”

  “Ruby, don’t touch him, honey. You never know,” Dorothy says.

  Jackson’s eyes are open but unresponsive. Robin can’t remember if they had been shut last time. Would the nurse have opened them for some reason?

  Ruby begins to sing “Jesus Loves Me,” bowing her head solemnly. Robin feels spooked, and Dorothy’s face is registering something close to shock.

  Ruby raises her head when she is done, looking pleased with herself. “Sister Margarita sang that one at morning mass yesterday especially forJackson.”

  “Very nice, Ruby,” Dorothy says. Her voice reveals discomfort—they can all hear it.

  “Mom,” Ruby says, stung, “I’m serious.”

  “I know you are, dear, but I’m still getting used to your transformation. Your grandmother has made you so ... devout.”

  Clark interrupts, “Ruby, this is wonderful. It’s just what Jackson needs. We all need a little help during these times.”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t wonderful,” Dorothy says, the pitch of her voice rising.

  “Dottie, just stay calm,” Clark snaps back.

  Robin moves closer to the bed, wishing he could just turn off his parents’ squabbling, all the horrible tension that has surfaced. He struggles to say something, but the rising and falling of Jackson’s chest and the bandages around his head and the glaze of his eyes leave him speechless. The force of what’s happened to Jackson seems so strong and mysterious and menacing that he can’t believe he has been thinking about so many other things over the past few days. He thinks about how he would feel if it was Scott in this bed right here, and that makes him want to cry—which makes him feel even worse than before. Worse about himself: the new, secret self none of them can see. He wonders if Jackson is in some psychic state, if he’s really floating above the room and able to monitor their thoughts. He thinks, Jackson, if you can read my mind, give me some signal, like an extra beep on that heartbeat machine.

  But nothing happens. Jackson isn’t floating around like a coma spirit. He’s a fragile mass of pale flesh tucked under a blanket, bony and small. Robin is sure that this is not going as well as the doctors want them to think. They say he’s getting better, stabilizing, but Robin doesn’t believe it. This world doesn’t let everything turn out right. He thinks of all the books and movies where terrible things happen so that people can learn their lessons. But what good do those lessons do? Even in his favorite film, West Side Story—by the end, everyone has learned not to hate each other, but there’s still a dead body in the middle of the screen.

  During the week that follows, everyone falls into a hushed routine. Clark and Dorothy travel back and forth to the hospital. With Nana back in Massachusetts, Stan isn’t around as much, and the house quiets down. Robin’s mother and Mrs. Spicer take turns driving to school, while an awkward tension floats between him and Victoria. In gym, Scott hardly says a word to him, and the silence is unbearable, but they’re never alone long enough for Robin to try to get him talking. A couple of days toward the end of the week, Scott doesn’t show up at all. Robin looks up Scott’s number in the phone book, but when he calls, Mr. Schatz answers gruffly and Robin hangs up before saying anything.

  He’s still sleeping in Ruby’s room. She insists on occupying Jackson’s bed, and he won’t go back to his own bed as long as she is in there. She’s become creepy, like a little witch cooking up spells. She buys a Miraculous Medal on a fake silver chain from Woolworth’s and wears it around her neck. She’s arranged all of Jackson’s things into an altar on his dresser—his baseball mitt, his school books, his souvenir mug from their trip to Cape Cod—and keeps votive candles burning without end.

  On Friday night, while everyone else is downstairs, Robin goes into his parents’ bedroom and calls Victoria’s number. A male voice answers.

  “Todd?” Robin says, his voice cracking.

  “No, this is his father.” Before Robin can say anything else, Mr. Spicer is calling, “Todd, it’s for you. One of your girlfriends.”

  Robin feels his throat go dry. Todd picks up the phone and says, “Debbie?”

  Robin deepens his voice. “It’s Robin.”

  “Robin?” Todd pauses and laughs. “He said it was—”

  “I was calling for Victoria and he didn’t even let me finish.”

  “That’s pretty fucking funny,” Todd says. “He thought you were my girlfriend.” He sweetens his voice into a seductive whisper, “Hey, baby, whatcha doing this Saturday?” Robin titters nervously. “What’s a-matter? Are you shy?”

  Robin toys with the idea of playing along with this, but his voice cracks again when he tries to speak. “I’m not doing anything this Saturday.”

  “Well, just so happens there’s a party going on,” Todd whispers. “I was just thinking too bad I don’t have anyone to go with.”

  Robin twirls the phone cord around his wrist. When he looks to the mirror over his mother’s dresser, he has a flash of himself as a Hollywood actress, enshrined in her satiny boudoir, the camera tracking in for a close-up as she struggles to resist the dubious attention of a suitor. He lifts one of his mother’s earrings—a jangly bit of costume jewelry—to the side of his face, and he silently mouths the words, All right, if you insist.

  “You listening to me?”

  Robin slaps the earring onto the dresser, fed up with this whole thing. “Yeah, I’m listening,” he says, his voice petulant. “You’re so funny I forgot to laugh.”

  “Seriously. You want to come?” The exaggerated gigolo voice is gone, replaced with his regular smooth talk, which Robin finds only slightly less gut churning. “You could come. It’s at Maggio’s. It’s an open house, so anyone can come.”

  “I can’t go to a party like that. I’m not part of that crowd.” He
waits for a reply, but now Todd is silent. Robin would kill to be able to read Todd’s mind. “What would I say to my parents? They’ll never let me go.”

  “I’ll get you high. You want to get high, don’t you?”

  Somewhere, a voice is warning him that this is all a humiliating setup, but he takes a step forward anyway, saying, “I got high last week for the first time since we went to the drive-in.”

  “See? So it’s time to do it again. High time, ha ha.”

  Robin slides to the floor, curling into a corner at the side of his mother’s dressing table. He whispers, “Is this a joke?”

  “If you don’t want to, forget it. Just thought it would be fun. You know, with your brother all messed up, I just thought you’d want to get wasted, forget your troubles. But if you’re not into it, I’ll just get Victoria.”

  “No!” Robin says too strongly. “I mean, I don’t really have to talk to her about anything important anyway.” Was he imagining that Todd was being cruel when he was really just being sympathetic?

  “I bet you’d be pretty funny on grass,” Todd says warmly.

  “It just made me talk a lot. Is that supposed to happen when you get high? I mean, I was a real blabbermouth.”

  “Really? What’d you talk about?”

  “Just stuff.”

  “Who’d you talk to?”

  He starts to say Scott’s name, then remembers the looks that passed between Scott and Todd in the cafeteria. “Just some kid from school.”

  “Anyone I’d know?”

  “No, just some kid in my gym class.”

  “I know some kids in your grade.”

  “If I go to this party,” Robin says, changing the subject before Todd pushes it too far, “maybe I should just go over to your house and tell my parents I’m studying with Victoria.”

  “Just play it cool. Right, Robin?”

  “Yeah, sure. Of course.”

  “This will be a pisser.”

  Robin hangs up without talking to Victoria. Maybe Todd is just being friendly. Maybe Robin’s just gotten old enough for Todd to take him seriously. Maybe this is just natural: now that he’s in high school he gets to go to high school parties. He looks at himself in the mirror, searching his face, his body, for some clue. What does Todd see when he looks at him?

  He locks himself in the bathroom and pulls down his pants. His dick is hard. He spits on it, pumps it frantically with his eyes shut tight, his mind racing through a thousand jump cuts of Todd Spicer doing every sexy thing he can imagine: kissing him all over, licking his skin, lying on top of him, their boners pressed together like Scott showed him. He lets his fingers roam down to his balls, explores the shape of them, different pressures and frictions. Pushing on the ridge beneath his balls sends a warm current in either direction. His fingers travel back to his asshole. He spits into his hand, like Scott did, and pokes around down there until his middle finger slides in through the puckered entrance. In the strange, spongy warmth of it, he presses upward until he finds a spot that rockets an electric charge from the base of his dick to the base of his throat. It’s like he’s being hoisted into the air or pulled up a roller coaster’s slope or driven into the wide blue sky by John Travolta at the end of Grease. His limbs rattle.

  In the unexpected frenzy, he knocks his mother’s hairspray off the vanity and it clanks loudly on the tiled floor. He reaches for the faucet, for a rush of water to cover up the clamor. In just a few seconds, he is on his tiptoes, gasping for air, aiming into the sink. The sensation is so strong he clamps shut his lips to stifle a howl.

  His come sticks to the porcelain like rubber cement—he scrubs the streaks with his fingertips to wash it away, ashamed and overwhelmed by the ecstatic urges inside of him.

  Chapter Eight

  The big surprise is that the party is so tightly compressed, a hundred people bunched up like in a crowded theater lobby. Robin had imagined room to stroll, small gatherings of conversation, a makeshift dance floor in the living room. Instead, Maggio’s house rumbles with rock music and noisy chatter and the chanting of drinking games. Most of the faces are familiar from the halls at school, but they’re not people he ever talks to, and as he enters, he gets questioning stares thrown his way, the kind that remind him that there’s a big difference between seventeen and thirteen, seniors and freshmen.

  This house is bigger than his but not so different in its layout—the staircase goes right up from the front hallway, the living room opens into the dining room and the kitchen beyond. There are kids in the kitchen, up the stairs, on the couches. A group at the dining room table is bouncing a quarter into an empty glass. When the quarter misses, someone drinks. Everyone is very enthusiastic about this. Robin gets that the point is to do a lot of everything: talking, drinking, smoking. Making out, too. They’re going at it everywhere. A boy on the couch has his hand inside a girl’s shirt; both of them have closed their eyes. I’d close my eyes, too, Robin thinks, if I was doing that in the middle of this room.

  He lets Todd clear a path, following him closely before the space fills in again. There’s no other way to move around without risking shoving someone, pissing off an upperclassman. He’s surprised how few people Todd talks to. There are nods here and there, but he doesn’t stop for anyone. Todd slinks through the crowd as if leading them somewhere, though Robin can’t figure out where that might be. Finally they get to the bathroom, where a metal keg rests in a tub filled with ice. It looks like something that washed ashore from a shipwreck—dented, scratched along its curved surface, the pump at the top like a periscope. Todd fills two plastic cups for them and then finds an empty section of the hallway where the idea, apparently, is to stand and lean.

  “Pretty big scene,” Todd says.

  “Yeah,” Robin agrees, sipping the beer. He doesn’t like the taste but takes a big gulp anyway, then coughs a little on the foam.

  “I don’t usually deal with this party scene too much,” Todd says. “I like to party, but I don’t like parties, you know?”

  “Sure,” Robin says, trying to sort that out.

  “I might not stay too long,” Todd says, scanning the room through narrowed eyes.

  Robin imitates Todd’s stance—one foot on the wall behind him, his weight on the other leg. When he was getting ready for the party, Robin settled his panic about what to wear by trying to dress like Todd: he put on his most faded, worn blue jeans and a dark blue T-shirt with a New England Patriots logo ironed on the front—a shirt that Larry left at his house. The only problem is his jacket; he doesn’t own a denim jacket like Todd’s, and the closest thing he came up with was an old beige windbreaker that he’s left unzipped because it’s too tight in the shoulders. His mother frowned as he left the house, saying, “You look like you work in a gas station.” She seemed to have believed his staying-up-late-at-Victoria’s story, though he won’t be sure until he gets home. He’s trying to not think about his parents now, trying to not even care.

  Todd pulls out two Marlboros. He lights his own and then lifts the flame to Robin’s, locking eyes for a moment across the disposable lighter, a moment Robin immediately suffuses with significance and desire. It doesn’t last, though; before he can settle on the secret meaning stored within the flick of Todd’s Bic, Ethan is suddenly there, growling, “Spicer!” and landing a punch on Todd’s shoulder. “Man, you said you’d be a no-show!”

  Todd looks surprised. “I thought you weren’t coming. What happened to your big night with what’s-her-name?”

  “Fuck her, man. She’s a stuck-up twat. But we knew that, right?” He play punches Todd in the stomach again. Robin watches attentively, wondering if Ethan remembers him. Another guy named Tully joins them. He’s short and stocky, smiling drunkenly, the long bangs of his messy hair covering half his face. He and Ethan talk quickly back and forth about what’s-her-name, coming up with a stream of contradictory insults: slut and prude, bitch and tease. Robin strains to keep an agreeable expression on his face, though this is exactly
the kind of boy talk that drives him crazy. He’s having a hard time believing that either one of them has really been with a girl at all. Todd is still scanning the party, cool as ever, leaving Robin to wonder exactly what Todd is doing with these losers.

  Ethan asks, “Who’d you come with, man?”

  Todd tilts his head toward Robin. “I’m letting neighbor boy tag along,” he says offhandedly. Ethan and Tully look blankly at him, finally registering his presence.

  “I’m probably the only freshman here,” Robin says.

  “Which means you’re candidate number one for getting fucked up and blowing chunks!” Ethan sends a fake punch his way. Robin flinches.

  Todd smiles as if the idea pleases him. “Can’t get him too shitfaced. We don’t want to be on cleanup duty, you know?”

  “Listen, let’s get to my car and spark up. I’m not wasting it on this crowd.”

  “Definitely,” Todd says.

  Robin tries to keep up with the three older guys as they step back into the crowd, but quickly understands that this kind of navigating takes practice. A menacing guitar solo is blaring from a pair of enormous wood-paneled speakers. He feels his enthusiasm dropping with every step, hates the way Todd has gone from being his protector to acting like a pathetic follower trapped by his friends. He thinks he might just sneak out the back door and go home.

  In the middle of the living room he is blocked by a couple of girls swaying to the music with their cigarettes held aloft. Behind them Robin sees a familiar face: Scott.