The Normals

by David Gilbert

  At this point, Nurse Clifford/George steps in. She holds, none too subtly, a can of pepper spray. "Okay, okay, break it up, boys." But the boys are already broken up, on their backs, massaging their various injuries and already giggling about the ridiculousness of the brawl. They are men bonded by fight. Nurse Clifford/George leans over and studies them. A little blood, some bruises, nothing serious. She takes close personal aim and sprays their eyes like the pupils are cockroaches. Now Roger and Anton are lovers in plight. They roll around, writhe, spit, snot, tear, and curse together. The floor could be the beach and tomorrow is good-bye. "No fighting," Nurse Clifford/George informs them. "If this happens again, you will be fined or possibly dismissed without pay." Security shows up—two beefy men who look as if they've recently outgrown a career in bouncing. They wear faux officer-of-the-law shirts a size too small so their guts might appear more menacing. As they lead Roger and Anton away, they seem nostalgic for club days when patrons were drunk and restraint was vaguely sexy.

  "Mild agitation," Nurse Clifford/George remarks to the remaining normals. "Not a real surprise." She scans the crowd. "We also have stun guns if something like this ever gets worse, so don't worry about your safety. We have enough voltage to bring down the biggest agitator."

  Nobody is relieved.

  Do, for one, is having difficulty with urination. He asks Billy and Lannigan after dinner, "You guys having any problems peeing?"

  "No," Billy says.

  "Because I feel like I need to pee, but I've got nothing to pee, and it's driving me nuts." Do stands by the bathroom door. He rarely ventures outside the room for recreation, and hasn't showered since his inaugural attempt. The smell coming from him is offensively pure, like a newborn's spit-up. His beginning facial hair could be houseflies that have landed on skin and done everything possible to rip themselves free, leaving behind their legs. "It's like I got a few extra drops of pee trapped in the tip of my, uhm, penis." Do blushes. Or blanches. He has combination shame.

  "I'm sure it's nothing," Billy tries reassuring.

  "It stings."

  "Ask the nurse about it."

  "I'm not asking the nurse about that."

  Do returns to his bed, holding his crotch in gotta-pee fashion.

  "Maybe it's an infection," Lannigan offers. "A UTI. Maybe chlamydia.

  Syphilis. Gonorrhea. Have you been fucking any sheep lately, farm boy? Or maybe it's cock cancer. Maybe a bit of flesh-eating virus got up in there. Or it could be soap, but you'd have to shower for soap, so strike that. I've heard stories—"

  "Come on," Billy says.

  "—about the urethra which would rattle your balls."

  "You're fine," Billy promises as Do crawls under the sheets.

  "Whatever you do, don't get a hard-on."

  "He's kidding."

  Lannigan shoots Billy a hard-truth look. "Billy, man, we've got to be honest with him. We both know what this is and we both know it's not good. How the rhesus monkeys, the test animal for this drug, had the same reaction, a burning sensation, an incomplete feeling toward urination, though of course they couldn't articulate that. No, those little critters just rubbed their rhesus monkey dicks raw, practically tore them off."

  "He's lying," Billy tells Do.

  "Billy, you're doing him no favors."

  "Shut up."

  "What, or else you'll sock me?" Lannigan cowers.

  "What's the point?" Billy asks, hoping he's speaking in code and Lannigan is hearing, Why pick on a person like Do?

  But Lannigan hears nothing. "Hey Do," he says.

  Do, defensively: "What?"

  "You're doing it again."

  "What?"

  "That thing."

  "What thing."

  "Oh, maybe you don't even notice it, maybe it's unconscious."

  "What am I doing?"

  "You just did it again."

  "What?"

  "Don't worry about it, it's no big deal, barely noticeable."

  "So what am I doing?"

  "Oh, never mind."

  Do looks toward Billy, says, "Billy?" with doubt, like every blink, every breath needs reassurance.

  "You're not doing anything. Don't listen to a word he says."

  Do turns toward the window. The sun is setting. In the courtyard, that bronze finger berates the last minutes of the visible day, like the night will be long and cold and without meaning.

  17

  BILLY NEVER sees Gretchen in the lounge. For meals, she lingers toward the end of the line and scouts the greens for the company of her own choosing. Her tablemates have no rhyme or reason, no continuity; there is no searching for friends or acquaintances, no slow-building coalitions. She's like a special celebrity on a cruise ship who spreads her presence around, sometimes pulling up a chair and making the group scoot for space. "Sorry, you mind?" Nobody ever does. Because like Billy, they've all been watching her. They all perk up when she sits down, as though her presence transforms them back into boys. A girl. The only girl. There might be other girls in other colors (the blues, in fact, have three who wear their giant sunglasses and toil together like a Gorgonian Yoko, Jackie, and Greta). But Gretchen is theirs alone. She is her own side effect. During feed and bleeds, she spends a minute eyeing the green medical Barcaloungers, the nine open seats, the eighteen hopefuls who might bookend her, the twenty-five imaginations who wonder what she's thinking. She is full of possible meaning, by dint of her shimmering face, her odd way with angles, her single devastating coup d'oeil for every hundred plain glances. She kicks up questions in her wake.

  At least she does for Billy.

  He walks down the hallway, slows in front of her room. Hello. Hey. Remember me? How've you been? Feeling all right? These lame openings pulse from the doorjamb, the future sound waves from a loser. Gretchen lies in the middle bed. Thick magazines are spread over the sheets like tepees from a fashion-conscious tribe. Cotton balls poke from lacquered toes accompanied by that headache-in-a-bottle odor. Her pose suggests a wet-compress, scarves draped over the lampshades.

  "Howdy," Billy says. Howdy?

  She glances over like whatever she encounters is an intriguing if obvious ploy.

  Billy provides his name, for he has no misconceptions of ever being memorable.

  "Duh," she says.

  "Sorry."

  "So how're things, Billy Schine?"

  "Fine, I guess. And you?"

  "So far all right." She scoots up in bed. "Come on in and take a bed." Billy obeys. "How're you feeling?" he asks.

  "Fine," she says.

  "I mean in terms of side effects."

  "I know."

  "Oh. Sorry."

  "I'm bored, that's about it," she says. "But I've been thinking, what happens if you feel good, if you feel more focused and sharper. Wouldn't that be scary? Maybe you're schizophrenic and you don't even realize it."

  Billy agrees. "You almost want to feel crappy."

  "But I do miss the voices," Gretchen says.

  Billy smiles, then laughs.

  "Was that a mercy laugh?"

  "No, it wasn't."

  "Please."

  "It was funny."

  "Not that funny."

  "Maybe we're on the placebo," Billy says, searching for a bond between them even if that bond is inert and innocuous, a sugar pill of connection.

  "Maybe. But if that's the case, I think I'll feel gypped. Not that I want what some of these people are getting. Drooling, all that twitching, seems pretty nasty. But placebo is so nothing, you know. I was kind of looking for something. I have enough placebo back at home."

  "And that's in New York, home?"

  "Yeah." Gretchen sort of detaches herself from this line of conversation and turns away from Billy, turns towards the television and the news of the Weather Channel, where a meteorologist stands in front of the jet stream that divides the country in a sine wave, a battle line fought with highs and lows, with cool air dipping and warm air rising, all under the double-breasted command
of Stuart James who gives an overly inspired Jonathan Edwards-like sermon on what to expect in the near future. Texas and Arizona will be in the one hundreds. "Hot hot hot," he says. A condemning finger is pointed toward Oracle, Arizona. "The nation's hottest temperature with a blistering one hundred sixteen degrees. Not so nice unless you have horns, a pitchfork, and a little pointy tale."

  "I guess this could be a side effect," Gretchen tells Billy. "My newfound obsession with the Weather Channel. I never cared before, but now I find myself loving this channel. It relaxes me." Gretchen pulls up her knees, holds them in a bow of interlocked fingers. Billy tries to snuggle into her thoughts, into the five-day forecast.

  "I'm hoping for a hurricane," she says, rocking slightly. "I want to watch it develop over the Atlantic, I want to track its projected path, its possible landfall, its hit-or-miss prognosis on the coastline; I want to see snapped trees and ruined trailer parks, boats deposited in the middle of an intersection, Stop signs bent backwards, people losing everything but determined to rebuild with what is left."

  Billy could've been listening to Elizabeth Bishop in a yellow slicker.

  "Sorry about that," Gretchen says.

  "About what?"

  "My rhapsody."

  "No need to apologize."

  "You have the kind of face that makes me talk," she tells him.

  Billy, intrigued: "What kind of face is that?"

  "Look in the mirror. Or don't. You might never escape."

  Billy, baffled: "What does that mean?"

  "You can't force it."

  Billy, now really baffled: "Force what?"

  But Gretchen refocuses on the Weather Channel where real weather, an hour old, is projected over the continental United States by way of time-lapse satellite imagery - clouds swirl, build, and disssipate, but always gain ground across the country. These fifteen seconds are played over and over again, as though a clue can be discovered.

  Billy, insistent: "Force what?"

  "An explanation," Gretchen finally says. "Especially if you ask."

  "You're confusing me. What is it about my face?"

  She grins, thin lips on mysterious logic. "It's a nice face."

  "But you said something about never escaping my face."

  "That's true. You can't escape your face."

  "But you were saying it in a specific way, not in a general metaphysical way."

  "Do you ever forget what you look like?" Gretchen asks. Frustration trumps flirtation. "I don't know what you're talking about," Billy says.

  "Do you ever forget how your face shapes up." Gretchen touches her cheeks in the style of a numinous soap commercial. "I mean, you always recognize yourself, of course, but when you're walking down the street and passing people, are you ever unsure how you look? It's like you can see and smell and taste and hear but you know nothing about your eyes and nose and mouth and ears."

  Billy, exasperated: "But what about my face in particular?"

  "I'm telling you."

  "Oh."

  "Your face is blank but reflective."

  Billy is unsure how to take this.

  "Like polished metal," she adds.

  "Oh."

  "It's like when you hear your voice in a recording and you swear that's not you though you know that of course that's you and what you're really saying is how can you sound like that, how can you not hear yourself if you sound like that, how can you ever talk again if that's how you really sound. Well, that's how you look, to me at least. It's like I can hear myself in your face and I have to talk to drown myself out."

  "That sounds awful," Billy says, imagining a mirror and an infinity of reflection.

  "It's a nice face," Gretchen repeats sweetly.

  Air-conditioning dips down from northerly vents and hits the warm featureless plain of Billy Schine, producing a weather system of flop sweat. Perspiration sends a droplet down the spine, chill inducing and seemingly suicidal in nature, a leap from the nape that lands on the crack of ass. But Stuart James is unconcerned about one man's weather. He's busy gesturing toward Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, where Charles "The Shroud of Chuck" Savitch is dying. He reports clear skies for the pilgrims who might be gauging their clothing needs. "Maybe a shower in three or four days but otherwise clear if humid. Drink plenty of fluids," he says like the world is in his care.

  "Are you adopted?" Gretchen asks suddenly.

  Billy, already flustered, now even more flustered: "Me? No. Why?"

  "Because you have that look," she says. "That adopted look. My ex-husband had the same look, bruised around the eyes, eager to please but easily hurt, love me because I hate myself."

  "Wait, I thought my face is blank but reflective."

  "Exactly."

  Billy tacks toward clearer wind. "So you're divorced?"

  "Three years," Gretchen says as if proclaiming sobriety. "And you remind me of him. I mean that as a compliment. My ex, he found out he was adopted totally by mistake. His parents never told him. They were old-time WASPS, and this was before open adoption and touchy-feely parenting and surrogate birth mothers and Chinese baby girls in every other stroller. This was when adoption was sort of shameful. And he found out because of a high school biology class—he told me the story all the time, told anyone the story; next to him in an airplane and you'd know this story before drinks were served. The class was doing some experiment, you know that experiment where you prick your finger and find out your blood type, well, they did that experiment, and he was an O, and he went home and asked his parents their blood type, and they said A or B or AB or whatever it is that makes having an O child impossible, and that's how he found out. He was fourteen. And he never told them, never called them on it. He waited for them to tell him. And he waited. And he waited. You should've seen their Thanksgivings. It was all subtext. It made me want to scream. Every day they didn't say anything got him more and more angry. After we were married, they blamed me. I probably should've said something. Because what they needed was a fight, you know, with everyone yelling and screaming, but they were way too polite. It got crazy for him. He'd fantasize about getting a rare genetic disease just so he could lord it over them. The funny thing is he never tried to find his birth parents. I don't think it ever really crossed his mind. He was too obsessed with his fake parents pretending otherwise."

  "How long were you married?" Billy asks.

  "About nine years."

  "Why did you split up?"

  Gretchen turns in bed and faces Billy, snuggling the space between them like sheets cuddled when alone. "He wanted children. It was all he thought about. It was almost sweet, in a psychotic way, but certainly sweet when I was twenty-seven. It started on the third date. He told me upfront he wanted four children because he thought three was an unfair number, and two was too teamy, and one was impossible for all concerned. It was all he talked about: his four theoretical children. He even had the ideal gender order mapped out: first girl, then boy, boy, then girl again. We had a good time together, even if he was courting my ovaries. He put on a big romantic show, spent serious money on me, which was thrilling, and by the fifth date I agreed that four was a nice number.

  "Within a year we were married and right away we tried. And tried. And tried. It was barely sex; it was straight-up baby-making. But nothing happened. Two months, three months, four months and he's suggesting a fertility doctor, and I'm telling him it's harder than you think, so just relax and give it time. Six months and I buy all those awful books with all those awful titles that make me cringe at the cashier. I begin sleeping with a thermometer by the bed and keeping a basal body temperature graph so I know exactly when I'm spiking toward ovulation. But still nothing. A year and we go to a fertility doctor and we learn that my insides have no obvious pathology and his sperm is fantastically motile. I start taking fertility pills. Still nothing. I have a hysterosalpingography and endocsopy performed. Then an endometrial biopsy. A postcoital exam, which is really pleasant. Immunologic testing in case my sera is spe
rmicidal. Over three years my ovaries and uterus and tubes and peritoneum and cervix are checked and rechecked. Half of the New York medical community have their hands up inside my situation. They harvest eggs and do in vitro three times, but still nothing. Maybe my uterine walls have no blast-hold, so they stitch in a few eggs and put me on bed rest. Nope. I try experimental therapies. It's a mystery, they say. As far as anyone can tell, my hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis is intact, though my husband starts viewing this partnership as the axis powers of World War Two and he's Eisenhower and every lay is D-Day. He treats my vagina like it's Omaha Beach. I mention adoption but he's bitterly opposed for obvious reasons. I mention a surrogate and he's briefly intrigued until he decides why not just marry one."

  Gretchen pauses. She seems more amused than sad, like those married years are a well-rehearsed routine for strangers. Maybe once she was upset, but since then she's divided and multiplied the story until all that remains is archness. Even so, the honesty is thrilling and unexpected. History told is history shared, and perhaps another history is implied, Billy already accepting her bruised heart even if she claims nothing but a little bump. He can't imagine Luke Sillansky or Stan Shackler getting this kind of talk. No, only Billy defends Gretchen by telling her, "Your ex sounds like a jerk."

  "Far from it," she says. "He was a nice guy, still is a nice guy, easily the nicest guy I've ever known. He just had fatherhood on his brain. He's remarried now and has his first child and I'm happy for him."

  "Do you still want kids?" Billy asks, a gentle inquisitor.

  "I wanted kids. Now I'm fine without them. I think you kind of wake up one morning and decide, choose, maybe defensively, I don't know, that you're alone, and you accept that you're alone, not alone alone, but without-kids alone, that you're going to get old without children standing behind you, and you embrace it for what it is, which is neither good nor bad."