The World of Normal Boys

by K. M. Soehnlein

  Together, they thumb through fashion magazines in the waiting area, trying to guess what Dorothy’s hair will look like when her turn is through. An hour later she emerges: her hair is parted down the center and dyed ink black except for two white-blond streaks, thick as ribbons, that frame her face dramatically. The streaks are cut shorter than the rest, which has been straightened to hang below her shoulders. The first thing Robin thinks is that she looks like Morticia Addams.

  “Tell me you like it,” Dorothy commands, seeing their shocked faces, “and then we’ll go home.”

  Clark is passed out on the couch. Nana is in the kitchen, refilling ice trays. An empty bottle of Seagrams rests at the bottom of the trash can.

  Robin hangs up his new clothes and sits at his desk. He pulls out a pencil and his new journal and he writes at the top of the page: “A Day in the City.” He writes a sentence: “Bobby McDonald and his mother decided to go into New York City, which is the most exciting city in the world according to Mrs. McDonald.” He reads it over and decides it sounds phony. He erases the sentence and tries again. “Bobby McDonald was very excited to be going into the city with his mother.” He sits with his elbow on the desk, his forehead resting on his hand. He doesn’t like the name he has given the boy. He tries another: “John Maxwell.” Then: “Max Johnson.” Then: “Max Jackson.” He crosses out the word “Jackson” so hard he rips the paper; then he rips the page from the book, crumpling it into a tight ball, squeezing until his knuckles turn white.

  The house is very quiet and very warm. He opens the window and sits on his bed with his knees at his chest and lets the cold air in. He can see Todd’s window, but it is without meaning to him; not a tinge of desire or anger or longing or excitement makes itself felt. He has not yet called Victoria and told her what happened, so he’s sure that Todd does not know either. He finds this comforting. It seems a very long distance between that window and this one, the distance between the living and the dead.

  People outside the family say they are proud of him: the model of composure, his mother’s strength through these long weeks. He knows what they are seeing: the old him, the Robin from before the fall who did not disobey, did not surprise anyone with bad behavior, did not refuse to account for himself. They are deceived by the new black clothes and the prep school hair cut. For two nights, while Jackson’s body is on view inside a dark wood coffin at Ryan’s Funeral Home in Greenlawn, Robin sits quietly in his chair, his hands clasped in his lap, his eyes lowered. Guests enter the room and walk directly to his parents. He stands to shake hands with his father’s business associates and the parents of kids in the neighborhood and his mother’s friends from the city who have made their way to New Jersey to pay their respects. The funeral parlor is crowded, and the crowd is thick with sadness at the death of someone so young. Still, there is much conversation and even occasional laughter, especially in the back of the room and the hallway, where guests are coming and going. This is the most surprising thing of all—more surprising even than the sight of his brother’s dead body inside the casket: that people are able to talk to each other with ease, that there are things to be said that have nothing at all to do with Jackson.

  The Spicers arrive early the second evening. Todd wears a wool suit jacket, a button-down shirt, and blue jeans; he shifts his shoulders against the jacket’s confinement and keeps one hand in his pocket at all times. Robin’s stomach twists into knots, but he holds his breath and tries not to show how surprised he is. Victoria crosses the room and hugs Robin and cries onto his shoulder. She talks through a runny nose and a stream of tears, saying over and over that she can’t believe it. Holding her like this, stroking her hair and whispering comforting words to her, he understands that even as he has been accusing himself of not thinking enough about Jackson over these past months, Jackson’s imminent death has never not been lodged in his mind. For Victoria, the funeral is something yet to be grasped; the very idea of Jackson’s death is new. He looks around the room at the crowd and thinks that he may be more prepared for this than any of them. He was there when it started.

  Todd stays away from him until just before his parents are ready to leave, and then he sits in the empty seat to Robin’s side. “I’m really sorry about your brother. It really fucking sucks.”

  Robin thanks him without meeting his eyes.

  “I guess it’s pretty hard for you,” Todd says.

  Robin looks at Todd’s face for some hint that Todd has ever cared for him at all. This face withholds so much: it does not want to be read. Robin thinks that what he always understood as Todd’s sexy strength was perhaps nothing more than a mask for secrets.

  “Yes, it’s hard,” Robin says to him. “But I’m strong.”

  Todd nods. He bites his lower lip. He looks up toward the casket. “So about what happened, that time, at The Bird—”

  “Forget it,” Robin says resolutely. “I have.”

  After a minute of awkward silence, Todd walks away, and Robin places his hand on the empty seat. A trace of warmth meets his palm. He gets one more look at Todd, from behind. Robin can hardly match up this Todd, stiff with nervousness, being led out the door by his mother and father, with Todd at The Bird, towering above him, his every motion a threat. That Todd had been terrifying, commanding, unshakable. In that moment, the two of them, and the anger that ran between them like an electric current, filled the whole world. Now it seems as though such an explosive moment did not happen, that it could not have happened. It was part of some game, some play on a stage, a dream that is crisp and sensual upon waking but a few hours later is less than nothing. This Todd, here tonight, proves it.

  When people pay him compliments, when they say he is strong, he knows better than to believe them. They are really saying that he is a good boy, a model son, which is not true. When he tells Todd Spicer that he is strong, he is saying that he is dangerous, that he is capable of great selfishness and indifference and hatred. He knows that when he keeps his head down and his hands clasped while the priest concludes the wake with prayers, anyone who is watching him must think he is praying for Jackson’s soul. But he is not; he is praying for his own.

  He believes himself to be capable of anything, now that he has contributed to the death of his brother. He is not certain he will go unpunished, but he does not think there is any greater punishment than living through this now. Or rather, he knows that everything that follows will be a punishment, because he will always know what he really is: a killer. The proof is indisputable: Jackson died on his birthday.

  At the funeral mass, he walks down the aisle with his family and sits in the front row. The tears have not yet come to him—he has lain awake for three nights, willing himself to cry, waiting for tears as a sign that he is not cold and unfeeling, that his brother’s death is affecting him as it should. The more he thinks about it, the more impossible it becomes to cry, the more empty of life he feels.

  Exhaustion claws at him. He falls asleep for five minutes on the way to the burial, then wakes to find spit drooling onto his shoulder. He is embarrassed; they are in a limousine and he feels as if he should be as alert and dignified as his mother. She sits across from him, staring out the window, unreadable behind her big sunglasses. She looks both stricken and chic, he thinks, like Jackie Onassis.

  The cemetery is an anticlimax. He wanted to see the coffin go into the ground. He wanted to throw flowers into the hole. He imagined someone—his mother? Ruby? his father?—collapsing in a fit of grief. But there were simply more prayers to be said, more of God’s word to be heard, and then they climbed back into the limo and left Jackson’s body in a box to be buried by strangers.

  The food is impressive; the caterers have outdone themselves. The dining room table is covered to the edges with silver trays of hors d’oeuvres, each with its own cup of toothpicks and dipping sauce, and platters of fresh vegetables and fancy crackers, and baskets of bread, and cheeses Robin has never before tasted. Friends have brought food; Aunt Corinne ha
s made his favorite Jell-O cake. The guests crowd around, filling their plates, gulping down cocktails. Men gather in the unfinished room, talking about construction. Everyone says something brief and sympathetic to him and Ruby. The muscles of his face hurt from being polite.

  He finally pulls himself from the living room and slips upstairs to his bedroom, relieved for the chance to be alone.

  Larry is sitting on Jackson’s bed. His gaze is lowered; he is biting a nail, a finger in his mouth. To his side, votive candles flicker on the dresser, where Ruby has renovated her altar to Jackson.

  “What are you doing?” Robin demands.

  Larry looks up, startled. “It’s a free country. I can sit here.”

  “This is my room,” Robin says, “and I don’t want you up here.”

  Larry stares at him angrily, hands curling into fists. “It’s still Jackson’s room, too.”

  Robin locks his eyes onto Larry’s. “No, it’s just my room now.”

  Larry plants himself in front of Robin and pokes his chest. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

  “Fine. Be that way. I’m not staying in here with you.” Robin throws open the window and climbs out onto the roof.

  The cold air envelopes him—and he’s instantly fuming that Larry drove him from his own bedroom. He stamps his feet on the shingles and screams, “Fuck!” over and over. Larry, Todd Spicer, Uncle Stan, his father, his mother. Everyone thinks they can push him around. He turns over in his head what he should have said to Larry, how he should have knocked Larry against the wall and then picked him up and tossed him out the door. “FUCK!” The word is like fuel. He paces to where the shingles end and the exposed wood of the new roof begins. He stomps and kicks, trembling the wood beneath his weight. The more he thinks about it, the angrier he gets, blood pumping into his neck, burning his ears, cresting like a wave in his skull.

  The back door slams below; his father stands in the backyard, looking up for the source of the disturbance. Before Robin even registers this, Larry is climbing through the window to the roof. “What are you throwing such a conniption for?” he says in the tough-guy voice that Robin has come to hate so much.

  “Don’t talk to me like that!”

  “Yeah? Make me.”

  Robin grits his teeth. That day on the slide, tormenting Ruby, Larry had spoken in that same voice, as if Robin was so easily bullied. It was that voice that had such an influence on Jackson, that made his own brother think of him as a fag, the way everyone else did. And, as much as anything else, it was that voice—telling him to shut up—that made Robin climb up the slide to confront them both.

  Everything Larry has ever said to him, every moment Robin has ever spent in his mocking company, now rises up in front of Robin, a wall of bricks trapping him in some unwanted, submissive space, a space he no longer can bear. Without thinking, he runs across the shingles, mouth open, unleashing guttural fury he cannot control. He batters his head and shoulder into Larry’s chest, knocking him down, pinning him. Larry’s freckled cheeks flush and he gulps for air. He tries to speak, but Robin wraps his hands around Larry’s throat and squeezes. He lifts Larry’s head with his hands and smashes it back down.

  “I hate you!” Robin screams. “I hate you! I hate your fucking guts!”

  He hears his name shouted from the yard, a faint, distant bell which he ignores. All there is for him is Larry’s skin, bright red under his grip, Larry’s lips turning blue. Larry lands punches on Robin’s back, his body struggling for life, but Robin does not loosen his grip. He feels Larry thrash against him, feels Larry’s hipbones in his crotch, feels his own dick getting hard from the friction of the struggle. Larry is trying to make him stop but Robin will not, cannot; every ounce of Larry’s resistance increases his rage. He lunges forward, dragging Larry underneath him like trapped roadkill. He tightens his knuckles, the softness of Larry’s flesh collapsing under his fingertips. “I hate you!” He squeezes and drags, he bangs into Larry with his crotch. He sees the edge of the roof, and the dead grass below, and the piled plywood and the cracked concrete. He wants to get to the edge—that is all he wants: to pull Larry to the edge. A voice from below orders him to stop. At the periphery of his vision people are gathering and calling to him. The sound of fear.

  He will not stop.

  Violence surges through his bones, his muscles, the raw hot yell raging from his throat. The machinery of his body gone mad. He wants to rise, to rise up from his body, for the violence to set him free. He wants to be in the air, with this boy, this normal boy whom he must destroy, in his grip. His claws want the puncture of skin, a bath of hot blood. His wings want to take him out over the yard; he wants to drop his hated prey to a bone-cracking death. And then he looks into Larry’s eyes and sees fear, sees that Larry is terribly, deathly afraid of him; he knows that Larry’s blood and breath are exploding, that Larry feels the empty, airy chill behind his head like the slope of a cliff and the domineering slams against his body like the beating it is. Robin’s vision clears for a moment: he is on the roof, strangling Larry, thrusting into him, screaming words that his own ears cannot really hear, and he understands that he is not a bird of prey; he understands, too, that still he is lethal, in his own body, with his own hands. He looks into Larry’s eyes and knows that Larry believes this, too. Larry’s eyes scream for mercy.

  Strong hands grab him around the middle, wrench him away from Larry. Someone is tossing him aside. His mother. Robin struggles from her grip, and his father, suddenly there, too, knocks him onto his ass, yelling “Jesus Christ, what are you doing? What are you doing?”

  Robin hears his own voice at last, screaming, “He did it! He killed Jackson! When Jackson was on the ground he turned him over and cracked his neck. It was his fault. He did it. It’s not my fault! It’s not my fault!”

  His mother’s hand slaps hard and flat against his face, silencing him. Robin gasps as if he’s been sucked into a vacuum. He looks to his mother for help but sees only fear and confusion. She is afraid of him, too.

  Larry is curled into Uncle Stan’s chest, sobbing helplessly; Stan runs his hand across Larry’s head as if he were ironing away the trauma. The crowd in the backyard stares up in rapt fascination. Robin finds Ruby: in the wide wonderment of her eyes, he senses her approval. She removes her hands from her mouth; her lips form a single phrase: “I love you.”

  A burning inside his chest, shooting upward into his skull like a flaming arrow. He shuts his eyes, his face contorts, he bites his lower lip until he pierces his own flesh. Tears run from his eyes like blood from a wound; he cannot stop the flow, nor can he see or feel beyond it. For hours, after the guests leave and the party is cleared from the house, he lies in his bed weeping. His mother sits with him, clenching his hand as if holding him back from the pull of an undertow.

  He is home sick for days, half conscious from a sudden flu. He drinks soup and tea and eats only buttered white toast. He feels the pains inside his body—first from eating after so long with no food, and then from hunger after waiting too long again—in a cycle that never brings relief. A headache pounds and does not abate; his throat is raw; his ears hum with a faraway whistle. The house is quiet as a hospital room. He hears no arguing, no talking back, no reprimands. He fantasizes that he’ll die here on this couch in the living room with his mother and his sister tending him, the surrounding silence expanding until it simply swallows him up.

  In his dreams now he is always killing, and he is always in danger as well. He is the one stalking in darkness with a gleaming silver blade in his hand, and he is the screaming victim falling in fear. He has woken up shaking with fright every day for a week. When he looks at his face in the bathroom mirror, his eyes are dark and secretive: he sees himself going mad.

  He stumbles from the couch, the fire in his throat impelling him toward a glass of water. As his eyes search the darkness beyond the TV’s fluttering, he picks up his mother’s voice. She is in the kitchen, on the phone. He hears her speak his name; he s
tops to listen. Her voice is tense, insistent: “Robin was beside himself—can’t you see that? ... No, I don’t think ... Yes, it was very upsetting ... Mother, of course I understand that... I told you—I don’t want to know what Larry said ... He’s very sick right now, very weak. I am not going to make him apologize ... No, no, I do not want . . . I’ll talk to Corinne myself ... No, not Stan—I don’t care what Clark says ... Mother, I am not going to argue with you.”

  It returns as a wave, crashing from the back of Robin’s brain. A violent collision in close-up: the grit of the roof, Larry’s pink skin, his own white knuckles tightening, his bones pressing down. At the center of it all, the guiding force, is a powerful, focused fury: the belief that he was balancing the scales. Only now, listening to his mother and envisioning Nana on the other end of the call, does he grasp something very basic about what happened on the roof: everyone saw it. What felt like a personal mission, private and fated, a long time coming, was actually a public event, an older boy attacking a younger boy, a seemingly random assault. It didn’t look like justice—it looked like cruelty. He thinks about how quiet the house has been since the funeral. Are people staying away from them? Are they whispering about the tragic, messed-up MacKenzie family: one son dead, the other a violent mental case?

  His throat is still stinging, begging for water; just swallowing spit feels abrasive, a Brillo pad on his vocal chords. The pain has been constant since that afternoon, when his accusations about Larry burst forth. He wonders, Did anyone believe me?

  He moves to the kitchen door, and Dorothy quickly gets off the phone. She clenches her jaw, her face contorted defensively.