The World of Normal Boys

by K. M. Soehnlein

  He approaches Jackson’s room with dread, clammy under his clothes, perspiring at the mere notion of his brother’s emaciated form. He says hello when he enters, “Hello Jackson,” the way he hears people say hello to their pets when they come home at the end of the day. You don’t expect a response but you say it just the same. The bones in Jackson’s face push against the tightening skin. His nose looks shrunken, as if the softness has been trimmed away, leaving only a sharp ridge. Dorothy sits in a vinyl armchair at Jackson’s bedside reading a book, not noticing what Robin says or does. Lately the fire in her has retracted, replaced with a new, false demeanor. She reminds Robin of one of those New York salesladies behind a perfume counter, the kind who ignores you with the greatest of ease and then turns on the superficial charm when you make her stop ignoring you. At some moments Robin finds himself despising her in a way he never before thought possible.

  “Mom,” he says one afternoon, his eyes on his disappearing brother. “Mom.”

  She looks up from her Tolstoy and flashes her cashier smile. “Yes, dear?”

  “I can tell that Jackson isn’t getting any better.”

  The tiny muscles around Dorothy’s eyes and lips flinch just ever so slightly, but she freezes her smile. “Don’t be a pessimist. The body recuperates at a slow pace. Changes aren’t always visible.”

  “The only change is that he’s shriveling away.”

  “We’ve been assured by the doctors—”

  “Yeah, right,” he interrupts. “I feel really reassured looking at him.”

  She closes the book but leaves her finger holding the page. “Are you having trouble being optimistic, Robin?” she asks tersely.

  “Never mind,” he says and looks away from her. The worst thing is that he believes she really agrees with him.

  Scott hardly ever answers the phone, and Robin finds himself intimidated by Mr. Schatz’s gruffness. Sometimes he hangs up without speaking. Even when Scott picks up, his father is often yelling in the background, trying to get Scott off the phone. When Mr. Schatz isn’t around, Robin talks for a while, usually about Jackson, and Scott listens. Sometimes while he speaks Robin hears the slip-click of a Bic lighter, the sandpaper whoosh of Scott taking smoke into his lungs. Sometimes Scott says, “This song is excellent,” and holds the phone next to his stereo speakers and Robin listens to all of it. One night Scott props up the receiver while the second side of Patti Smith’s “Horses” plays, then goes away. Robin gets nudged off the phone by his mother before Scott comes back. He hangs up on a wild Patti telling the strange sexy story of a boy named Johnny: An angel looks down on him and says, ‘Aw, pretty boy, can’t you show me nothing but surrender?’

  Clark has taken Ruby to the hospital. Dorothy has been brooding all day. She blames it on Anna Karenina: “the hellish state of that woman’s life.” She’d shut herself in her darkened bedroom, not even a crack of light under the door, telling him, “It’s a fend-for-yourself dinner.” Cooking seems like too much work—even a salad is too much. He settles on a bowl piled with his two favorites—vanilla caramel ice cream and rainbow sherbet—and brings it up to his bedroom to enjoy in private.

  He leans against the window sill. Todd’s bedroom light is on. His window is a yellow rectangle with a silhouette passing across it.

  Scott is part of his days now, but it is Todd who has taken over his thoughts. Todd was there first, plus Todd holds the most secrets—it seems that way to Robin: Todd’s a pothead but not really a burnout; he’s not a jock but he goes to jock parties; he’s got this girl Debbie hanging around all the time, but he taught Scott “wiener in the bun” and put my boner in his mouth. Todd does whatever he wants, Robin thinks. Todd says whatever he wants. Todd gets all shaken up if you don’t say what he wants you to say, so it’s good to try to figure out what Todd wants. He likes you better that way.

  Robin, nearly in a trance staring at Todd’s backlit shadow, throws on a coat and floats downstairs. He leaves a note for his mother claiming that he’s studying with Victoria, hoping she doesn’t know Victoria has dance class tonight. He ambles across the two backyards with his hands in his front pockets. He’s readying himself to give an answer, fantasizing the sudden emergence of an authority figure who steps out of the darkness and demands to know what he is doing. I’m hanging out with Todd. What’s the problem?

  At the Spicers’ back door he hears recorded music traveling down from upstairs. When Mrs. Spicer does not answer his knock, he knows only Todd is home. He pushes in.

  The spotless kitchen, the dining room and living room, unruffled: Mrs. Spicer is a model of good housekeeping. This is a museum compared to the disorder he lives in. He pokes his head into the den, where the TV sits on a low, varnished table and the cushions on the couch sag from use. The stairs to the bedrooms are carpeted.

  There is the feathery smell of pot.

  “Todd?” He might still back out, he has not yet been discovered. He raises his voice. “Todd!”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Hi, Todd. It’s Robin. Robin MacKenzie.” He suddenly thinks Todd won’t even remember him—ludicrous, but he thinks it just the same.

  Heavy footsteps carry Todd from his attic room, drop him right there in front of Robin. Bare feet, brown corduroy pants pegged high, black Springsteen concert T-shirt, sleeves cut off. Robin takes in so much skin—ankles, arms, neck, and the sliver of his waist that Robin has come to revere above all other flesh. Robin’s heartbeat shakes his entire body, rattles his voice as he makes himself speak. “I heard the music and I thought I’d say, um, hi.”

  Todd shakes his head as if waking from sleep. “Is anyone home?”

  “I let myself in.” Robin takes a step backward, losing his courage. “I didn’t mean to bother you. I can leave. You’re probably doing stuff.”

  Todd pinches a thumb and index finger together and brings an invisible joint to his mouth. “Just the usual,” he says.

  “Cool,” Robin says. He puts his hands in his pockets, brushes the tip of a sneaker on the carpet, averts his eyes from Todd’s scrutinizing stare.

  Todd is walking back up to his bedroom. Robin makes a split-second decision: Todd did not ask him to leave, so he follows. Closes the attic door behind him. The wooden steps creak under his feet.

  The smells of old dust and musty bricks and piles of Todd’s unwashed clothes. The ceiling is low. The wallpaper—faded frontier scenes of cowboys on horses pointing guns at Indians with bows drawn—peels at the edges. Patio furniture—a collapsible card table, aluminum-frame chairs crisscrossed by green and yellow nylon—is scattered about. A mattress and boxspring under a tangle of striped sheets are wedged in the corner, where the roof slopes lowest. On the opposite wall is the window that Robin has spied into so many times, surrounded by a collection of bumper stickers. Robin reads one that says, There is no gravity. The earth just sucks.

  Todd is flipping the record on his turntable. He has not acknowledged Robin’s presence within this private chamber. Robin says, “Cool room,” to make it clear that he has followed Todd up. Through two enormous wood-paneled speakers, the hiss of the album begins: organ and guitars calling forth a throaty man’s voice. Robin has heard it before but can’t identify it.

  Todd pivots, lifting his arms over his head, stretching one, then the other to the ceiling, muscles and sinew taut. The white-white skin of his armpit, with its shock of black wiry hair, is a secret place exposed. Robin braces his foot flat to the floor to keep his leg from shaking. Todd’s languorous stretch lingers on even as he spits out his words. “So why are you hanging around, man?”

  In his sneaker is the joint that Scott gave him. He pulls it out—flattened and crooked and a little damp from two weeks in his pocket.

  Todd takes a step closer. “Where did you come up with that?”

  Robin relaxes; he’s scored a point. “From Scott,” he says, right away wishing he hadn’t.

  “Aw, fuck Scott. He’s a goddamn faggot,” Todd says. “Plus his pot suck
s.” He kicks at a paperback on the floor, sending it skidding. Robin feels himself slipping down a funnel. The book Todd kicked is No One Gets Out of Here Alive—Jim Morrison preens on the scarlet-and-gold cover. This is the music Todd’s playing. Come on come on now touch me babe. Can’t you see that I am not afraid?

  Todd takes another step toward Robin. “What does he say about me?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’ll kick his ass if he’s talking his bullshit again.” Todd lays his palm on Robin’s chest.

  Todd’s touch is a push off a ledge, a blast of heat, a truth serum. “He saw us leave the party together.”

  Todd is close enough now that his breath lands on Robin’s face. “I’m gonna kick his skinny little ass.”

  Dry mouth, thumping pulse, dizzy skull. “I think he’s jealous.” Robin’s voice, just above a whisper. “Did you ... do it with him?”

  “What?”

  “He said you and him—”

  “He just can’t keep his mouth shut—that’s the fucking problem.” His hands are clenching inward. “Did he say—” Robin waits for more, but Todd clams up, retreats a step. “Forget it.” He turns up the music: What was that promise that you made?

  Robin clears his throat and takes a deep breath. He wants to say this. “Scott said you taught him this thing called wiener in the bun.”

  The burning sting skids across his face before he understands it. His balance is gone. He reaches out to brace himself and lands on the bed, his fingers crumpling into the sheets. Throbbing pain across his nose and cheekbone: Todd has just whacked him with the back of his hand.

  Todd’s voice is half rage, half whine. “That’s fucked up! He shouldn’t be spreading that shit around!”

  Robin scrambles back to where the bed meets the downsloping roof, anticipating another blow. He wipes a drop of blood from his nose.

  “What else did he say about me?” Todd demands.

  Robin tilts his head back to stop the bloodflow. His eyes are watering. “How should I know what else he says? I don’t spend every minute of my life with him.”

  Todd paces like a creature in a cage. He doesn’t meet Robin’s eyes—Robin remembers the night on the golf course; his talk of living in the Village rankled Todd so much he turned away from his gaze then, too. Todd says, “I didn’t mean to hit you, but you shouldn’t repeat the shit Scott Schatz says. Next time you talk to him, you can tell him to go fuck himself.” There is a kind of pleading to Todd’s voice, which so soon after the explosion surprises Robin.

  “You didn’t have to hit me.” He flashes his palm, smeared scarlet. “Look.”

  “I’m just mad.” The veins in Todd’s neck still throb, but he is calming down now. He retrieves a towel from the floor. “Here. Use this.”

  The terrycloth is rigid, coarse against Robin’s nostrils. “Do you have anything cleaner?”

  “Oh, shit. That’s my sperm towel. Sorry, man.” He offers instead a dirt-brown T-shirt streaked with engine grease, then sits next to him on the bed.

  Todd’s sweat is embedded in the shirt, Robin imagines his blood seeping in and mingling with the sweat, saturating the fibers. Boil the whole thing in water, make Todd-and-Robin tea. He sniffs in; the bones in his face ache. Todd hit him, drew blood—he can’t quite believe it. “I feel kind of dizzy now. I should go.”

  “No!” Todd jumps up from the bed. “You can’t leave yet. Your nose is still dripping. I know, let’s smoke that doob.”

  “I can’t now,” Robin protests.

  “It’ll be good for you, I swear.” A frantic scan of the room—he finds the joint on the floor, where it fell during the impact, and quickly starts it up. “Scott Schatz is a fucking liar, a fucking big-mouth piece of shit scum. I don’t know why you hang out with him.”

  Robin peels the sticky shirt from his nose; the blood has stained the brown cloth black—shades of darkness that remind him of an abstract painting he’s seen at MoMA, which brings to mind his mother. Did she wake up, did she get my note, what if she needs me, wants me to come home? What if she calls over here?

  Todd holds out the joint. He takes it, inhales deeply, painlessly trapping the sweet smoke in his throat. He is amazed how easy smoking has become. Once the high grabs hold he can’t help himself—he is talking again about Scott. “Well, I only went over to Scott’s because I got in a fight with my father and mother and I was kind of running away. I thought about coming over here, but if I’m gonna run away it should be to somewhere, not just my own backyard.”

  Todd takes the joint back. “It’s all the same pile of shit, one street or the next, your street, my street, no big fucking difference. Except when you live over by Marble Road, like Scott. That’s a fucking ghetto.”

  Robin slides forward, nearer to Todd, feeling his weight sink into the soft mattress. “Yeah, he seemed really poor. His father was majorly drunk in the kitchen in the middle of the day.”

  “And his mother’s in the fucking loony bin. She tried to kill herself. That’s when he got so weird.” He falls backward on the bed. “Guess that shit runs in the family: weird mother, weird son.”

  Robin is considering this information—Scott alluded to it only once—and thinking about his own situation—weird mother/weird son?—when, like an unexpected, abrupt announcement on the P.A. system, Victoria’s voice is alive in the room. She is bounding up the stairs, demanding something of Todd—and then, having caught sight of Robin, she falls speechless.

  He bolts to his feet and wipes under his nose—blood has clotted like a pebble in his left nostril.

  “What are you doing up here?” She slaps at the smoky air. “As if I couldn’t figure it out.”

  Todd answers, “He’s just hanging out.”

  Robin tries to adopt Todd’s casual delivery. “You weren’t home.”

  Victoria narrows her eyes at him. “It’s Thursday night. I have dance. As if you didn’t know.”

  “No, I knew. I just”—casual, cool—“I thought I’d come over and wait for you to get home.”

  “And smoke dope?”

  Todd smiles. “Like I told Mom, it’s incense.”

  Robin laughs at the lie, but Victoria is not amused. He moves to sit on the bed and then changes his mind; instinctively, it doesn’t seem OK to sit so close to Todd at this moment, with Victoria here. He changes direction clumsily and lands in one of the lawn chairs. “I’m sorry. I just got stoned.”

  Victoria fixes her stare on her brother. “You’re such an asshole, Todd.”

  He shoots up his middle finger. “Sit and spin.”

  Robin stifles another snicker, palm catching his breath. Victoria’s mouth hangs open, incredulous. “I’m going to watch Mork and Mindy. Are you coming down?”

  “Umm ...” He looks to Todd, who has flopped back on the bed and splayed his arms over his head—the sexy underskin exposed again. He looks to Victoria, spoil sport disapproval on her face. A tug in either direction: temptation/duty, trouble/familiarity. “I’ll be down in a minute,” he says. He balls the bloodstained T-shirt into his nose.

  “Fine. I’m leaving.”

  Robin listens as her footsteps pound an angry exit. Fine, I’m leaving. She could have stayed, he tells himself. She just wanted to be a brat—Todd’s bratty younger sister. That’s it—Victoria now seems so young to him. Ballet lessons, favorite TV shows. Are they still going to be friends?

  Todd calls to her, “Don’t tell Mom, man.” He hops to his feet and follows her to the bottom of the stairs. She slams the door shut. He turns the lock.

  The music drones: Riders on the storm. Into this house we’re born. Into this world we’re thrown. They have sparked up again, sucking from the roach every last wisp of its transformative power. On the last hit—just paper and ash really—Robin burns the tip of his thumb, tries to shake the pain away, licks the tip of his tongue against it, teeth on the nail. He wonders, how does Todd manage to smoke so much, and Scott, too? Every time Robin is high he is aware of a shifting, a forced e
ntry into his perspective; this high world is a threat to the regular, organized state of things. When he stands, the room threatens to slip out from under his feet.

  Victoria’s presence lingers long after she has removed herself. Robin fears that his disloyalty will anger her, that she will try to balance the scales by telling her mother what he is doing up here. Mrs. Spicer, the upright housewife, would certainly march him back home. And what would his mother say? He makes himself stop thinking about it, tells himself that Victoria might disapprove of this, but she wouldn’t narc on him. (Narc—where did he get that word from? Scott? Todd? Victoria’s right—he’s becoming like them, a scum.)

  He is more afraid that she will figure out the secret longings that coaxed him up here in the first place. Fear, desire, the guy smells of the room, the sultry buzz of the dope—all of it is heightened now. He is no longer alone in the house with Todd, but Todd has bolted them into his fortress; there has been an intrusion, but it has secured their privacy.

  What he feels is heat—his ears burning, his throat scorched, the pulse at the tip of his thumb. The accumulation of these little pains makes him think of Jackson—does Jackson feel his injuries? Does he know his body is broken?

  “What’s up with you, man?” Todd waves his hand past Robin’s eyes.

  “I can’t believe you said Scott’s pot sucks. I feel like I’m in a dream.”

  Todd closes his fingers around his crotch and squeezes. “Maybe you’re in a wet dream.”

  “Scott said you had one”—he tries to make himself stop talking, but the impulse propels the words forward—“about me. He said you said in the dream you were calling me sissy-boy.”

  “I’m gonna kick his ass. I swear, I’m gonna fucking kill him.” Robin snaps from his haze long enough to worry that he will be hit again, but Todd can only work up a sloppy punch to the ceiling angling down over them. He shakes his knuckles and sits on his aching hand. “He made it up anyway.”