The Normals

by David Gilbert

  Stew Slocum slaps the table with excess hilarity.

  As always, Billy is the last to know.

  Gretchen squeals with delight. "Can you believe this?" she asks.

  "No," Billy answers from the neighboring bed.

  The interview is not going well. It started well enough, with a brief video introduction for those people living in caves: the chronology of Chuck, birth, typical childhood photographs, school, the town he grew up in, the normal fluff seen thousands of times. It then tackled the last frenzied month, the MRI, the tabloid story, the sensation of Chuck, the doctors, the pilgrims and their firsthand accounts of something special happening here, something unmistakably holy. This was followed by the famous reporter inside the now internationally known ranch house on 410 Cedar Lane, touring the home with the sister and mother of Chuck who recounted warm stories about their Chuck growing up, showing the small backyard with the rusted jungle gym—a real terror, he was—going into his childhood room still decorated with heavy metal posters and barely clad women which instantly date Chuck 1987. From the bedroom the camera panned toward the window where outside, gathered on the front lawn, a crowd sang hymns and held signs of Christian support. The famous reporter asked if they could have ever imagined such a scene, the two women shaking their heads, never in a million years. Next came Chuck himself. He was hospiced in the living room with a state-of-the-art hospital bed, a large-screen television, a DVD player, a VCR, all these goods donated by local Menomonee Falls businesses, even the full-time nurse who smiled as she took Chuck's pulse and wiped the spittle from his slack lips. There were glimpses of the day in the life of Chuck, his meals and massages, his constant care, his medication, his friends visiting, rock on, his uncle who wore a Savitch Towing and Plowing T-shirt and baseball cap, you stay strong, boy. There were tidbits of all the mail he's received, ten pouches worth, none of them get-well cards but instead notes of inspiration, some enclosed with drawings from children, Chuck crayoned in a smiley-faced heaven, Chuck holding hands with a stick-figure Jesus. Other letters sounded like resumes of pain, with photos attached of loved ones too sick to travel but please say a prayer if you could. "They break your heart," the sister said, holding them with the regret of a casting agent who has already filled the lead. Then finally, after all this and a round of commercials, there was the interview.

  And it's not going well.

  Chuck is bedridden between mother and sister. His mouth is lolled open, and it seems his neck is unable to support the psychic weight of the brain tumor. He's just proclaimed himself, in soft but unmistakable words, the left gonad of God.

  The famous reporter squints through her third eye-tuck. She appears a bit uncomfortable in this setting, considering the celebrity homes she normally visits, the retreats and estates and mansions, not this kind of place where dreams come to die. Her facelift has a hard time registering meekness. "What do you mean by that?" she asks with professional seriousness.

  "That's the cancer talking," the mother of Chuck answers.

  "Of course, Mother," the sister of Chuck says.

  "It's doing something to his brain."

  "Obviously, Mother."

  "And the morphine. The poor boy is on morphine. For the pain."

  "Mother, please."

  "And he's always been a joker, oh Lord, yes. I think he was probably having a joke on you. Right honey, one of your jokes. But I tell you, it's the first thing he's said in a couple of days. We think the cancer's gotten into the talky part of his brain. But it's nice to hear him speak even if it is off-color." She beams down on her son and gently rubs his head. "You wicked wretch. You've been saving up your strength for that!"

  "Mother, please." The sister of Chuck battles the daughter of embarrassment.

  "What?"

  She gestures toward the famous reporter.

  "Oh," the mother says. "Sorry."

  The famous reporter smiles. "That's quite all right."

  The mother shakes her head. "I still can't believe you're in my living room."

  "Mother!"

  "You might act all sophisticated, like this is no big deal, but that's your generation." She turns toward the famous reporter. "They think our little town is a mile away from Hollywood. But me, I'm old-fashioned and I'm sorry but I'm starstruck. Oh, the people you've interviewed. I bet you've got the best gossip. Maybe later, hmm."

  Gretchen claps her hands. "This is unbelievable."

  "Sure is," Billy says with less enthusiasm.

  "Why so glum?"

  "I'm not in the greatest mood."

  Billy looks toward the TV where Chuck is in close-up. A question has just been asked—"How do you feel about all this attention?"—and Chuck lies there, staring toward the distance, his eyes empty, his strength sapped from his last reply. Breathing is rough on him, white-capped with moans that spill drool and glisten his chin. There are no more jokes left, no wiseass comments, only a certain dumb seriousness that transforms his features until Billy realizes what he's seeing is unspeakable. It's the slow nothing. It's probably where his own mother is right now, holding a shiver of what was once there, a tiny bit of life huddled in the cold corner, clawing for warmth. The question is repeated. The mother of Chuck reaches over and strokes her son's hand. Sadness is under her normal good cheer, this brawny woman, large and loving and probably pretty tough, a woman not unfamiliar with bars and bad men, a storyteller, a laugher, perhaps of Bavarian stock mixed with the mongrels of America. She's proudly unsophisticated. She's easy with herself and easy with her son, easy with the knowledge that his smile is what she lives for. But the sister is tense. She's all speak, you bastard. Dressed up, made up, a hundred times rehearsed in her own mind, she grips her knees and seems to telepath the right response to her brother, the perfect response, and as usual, he isn't listening. Now the silence is becoming awkward. The sister wedges her face as if nothing but ice stands before her and she must break through it to escape. Damn her brother and mother, they can stay behind and freeze together.

  "Blessed and moved is how we feel," the sister says for him. "We feel like we've been given a gift, a gift from God that we're sharing with the whole world. And it is moving people. People are moved. People are touched. They feel the presence of God right here. We all do. It's a radiance." She raises her hands beatifically.

  "Well," the mother begins.

  But the daughter keeps talking. "They say he might be a victim soul, that he takes on suffering for other people, that's what they're studying, the church officials. They says it's a pretty strong case, what with the evidence outside, all the people who've claimed, well, not healing, no, there's been no substantiated proof of that, not yet, but a vast improvement in mood. It's hope, I think. A lightness of spirit. That's what Chuck here has done."

  "Excuse me," the mother says. "Can I get one thing straight? He's 'Charlie.' He's never been 'Chuck.' He hates 'Chuck,' ever since being called Up-Chuck in third grade. I'd like to make that clear once and for all."

  " 'Chuck,' 'Charlie,' it doesn't matter, Mother. What matters is what he represents. He's a vessel for God's true light. It's Him saying I'm here with you."

  "Great, so God gives my boy cancer."

  "He's a victim soul, Mother."

  "I'll still be burying my son, my only son, in the near future."

  "Mary did the same."

  "I'm no Mary."

  Charlie lies there, a net for this rally.

  The famous reporter jumps in. "Charlie, do you feel like a vessel of God?"

  The question passes through him.

  "I'm sorry," the mother says, "but like I warned, he isn't talking much anymore, with all the pain medication and the tumor growing. You're tired baby, aren't you. So tired. Close your eyes if you want. I don't blame you for not saying anything even if you could."

  "Mother!"

  "Nancy, enough."

  The sister suddenly gets up. "I think we should stop the interview. Can we stop? My brother's not having a good day and obviously
my mother isn't either and this just isn't working out the way it should, so let's stop."

  "Fine, leave," the mother says. "I've let you handle things long enough."

  "This interview is over," the sister says to the camera. "You can edit around this and just keep the inside look. Maybe we should open up the curtains and you can get a shot of the pilgrims' reaction. Or better, they can come in and have a moment with Chuck, a laying of the hands, and you can witness their being overwhelmed by the spirit which is really nice."

  The mother of Chuck grabs the daughter's arm. "Look at your brother," she says. "Look at him. That's your brother and he's dying. He's dying in the most awful way. I know you had your problems with him, but he's dying, and he's not dying for your sins, or my sins, or anybody's sins, he's just dying, plain and simple. Next year this bed will be gone, the people outside will be gone, the reporters will be gone, all this hoopla will be gone, and all that will be left is a grave. A victim soul. I don't mean to belittle anybody's religion, but that's silly. Maybe suffering has a bit of grace to it, but don't tell that to the person suffering or to the mother of the person suffering because you'll end up with spit in your eye."

  "Mother" is yelled with the tenor of Judas.

  "I don't mean to spring this on you," the mother says to the famous reporter who is far from upset. "But this has gotten out of hand. Maybe for a second I enjoyed the attention. I know Charlie did. I thought it was worth it if he was happy because I knew what lay ahead. But we're at what lays ahead, you know, and I think it's high time we flip on all the lights and tell people to go home or drink somewhere else, this bar is closed."

  "Mother, this isn't about you."

  "Oh, yes it is," she says.

  The family of Chuck has been replaced by the famous reporter who sits in the studio and chats with her co-anchor. She shares with him her impressions of what they have just seen and how the more complicated personal story often lurks behind the public story. They both nod thoughtfully.

  That's when Billy gathers his nerve to just say it, not now, not yet, wait a second, like a stuntman judging the wind, the overall Tightness of the moment that once taken can't be taken back, heart racing, eyes closed, deep breath, jumping, "Did you sleep with Sillansky?" His tone is far from cool. He hears the thud in the question, the voice-cracking honesty. Gretchen turns toward him. Her face shimmers with a Jeep Cherokee storming across the American West. "Has he been talking?" she asks.

  "He and a few others."

  "I thought my ears were burning," she says.

  "So it's true."

  Gretchen narrows her eyes, tilts her head toward one o'clock as if this is the hour of someone else's reckoning. "I plead the Fifth, prosecutor."

  "Barry Pica? Don't tell me that's also true."

  "Okay, I won't."

  "I mean, Sillansky, fine, but the rest of them?"

  "Are they all talking?"

  "Of course they are."

  "Good," she says curtly.

  Billy goes from prone to upright.

  "Can I ask why?"

  "Maybe it's a side effect."

  "Can we be serious?"

  "About what?" Gretchen asks.

  "About why you slept with all these guys."

  "Do you want to know why them or why not you?"

  "Leave me out of this."

  "I did actually."

  "Look," Billy tells her. "I'm your friend, right, I mean, we're friends, and I just want to know why you'd do something like this because it doesn't seem healthy."

  "Healthy?" she says, confounded.

  "Maybe that's not the right word."

  "Try another word. I'm dying to know what it is."

  "It seems . . . sad," Billy puts forward.

  Gretchen flinches as if slapped with open-palmed pity. But she quickly recovers. "Well, maybe I like sex. Maybe this is a dream come true, being the only woman with all these men. How would you feel if you were the only man surrounded by women? Not bad. Kind of thrilling. Maybe this happened by accident. Maybe I was expecting to feel something, you know, from the drug, and when nothing happened, maybe I came up with my own idea. I got bored. I saw all these men. And I started thinking about them. In two days they'll go home, back to their non-normal normal lives, and invariably they'll tell stories. They'll tell their friends about their insane time here, testing experimental drugs, the side effects. You know, the money might be good and easy, but you don't do something like this without knowing you're getting a good story. It's the main reason I came. I wanted one of those stories that make people go 'huh?' The story is the biggest perk. You know what I mean? The story sort of premeditates the exploit. It's like jumping from an airplane knowing the only reason you're really jumping from an airplane is so you can tell people you've jumped from an airplane. That's half of the fun. It's the same here. Then I got here and it's just boring. I'm getting nothing out of it. And I started thinking about the men, how they were flirting with me like I was some great beauty, and I thought maybe I'll give them a story, or add something extra to their story. I could almost hear them with their friends back home. The craziest thing is I fucked this chick, I did, seriously, dude, the wildest fuck of my life. Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. The sex itself was a joke. Trust me, the sex was nothing. And seven guys is the grand total. But for me, the excitement comes after the fact, when I imagine them remembering me a week, two weeks from now. And they will. Absolutely. Even without telling the story, they'll remember me. I'll pop into their heads. I'll be that flash during the daily grind. Oh yeah, that girl, that crazy girl in Albany. I'll sneak into their dreams. I'll become their sex-movie moment they'll replay at will. You ask how could I with Barry Pica, well, precisely because he's never going to forget. I'm his sexual highlight."

  "More like punch line," Billy says.

  "You don't really believe that. You probably couldn't name the people you went to high school with but until your dying day you'll be able to remember the people you slept with there. I don't know. It's like every time you sleep with somebody new, you lose a bit more of that awkward virginity. Unless you're a rock star or a super stud, you remember, but even Wilt Chamberlain never lost count. He knew the number. He could probably sit down and list maybe not the names, but the bodies. Don't tell me you don't remember every lay let alone every kiss."

  "That's probably true, but remembering is the by-product of passion and affection and drunkenness and idiocy and intimacy, all those things that get you into bed. To sleep with someone just to be remembered seems, I don't know."

  "Don't you want to be remembered?"

  "Not by people I'd rather forget."

  "I want to be remembered," Gretchen says quietly.

  "For being an easy lay?"

  "But in their minds I'll become much more than an easy lay. Think about your own one-night stands. Don't they carry a certain fond recollection, a kind of Oh-my-God-did-that-really-happen magic? Even the bad ones, after a time, become youthful indiscretion. I think they can have more staying power than a six-month relationship; more mystery, that's for sure. Maybe you cringe but you cringe with delight. And you men in particular, you're insanely nostalgic about your sexual past. Even if you're happily married, happily dating, you boys are always reaching back and remembering the ones who came before. Ha! A pun. Don't tell me that's not true. I had an ex-husband who presented me with a list before we got married, a list I didn't want but a list he wanted in exchange for my own list. It's not a criticism, not at all. It's almost sweet, how you boys will chase memories and spread your genes in retrospect. It's what preserves monogamy, I think. In my book, adultery is a fundamental breakdown in imagination."

  "You've given this thought," Billy says.

  "I have," Gretchen says.

  "Maybe too much thought," Billy says.

  "That might be true. But it's not like I've slept with a ton of men. I was very faithful to my husband. And before I was married, there were only eight other men. But I'm getting older, you know. Or old e
nough. And maybe I'll get married again, though I doubt it right now, but maybe. In the meantime why not leave behind miniature relics of myself while I can. And this place is ideal. Everybody has been screened for AIDS and STDs. Everybody is basically clean. And the best part is I'll never see any of them again."

  "I get it in concept but not reality. I mean, Barry Pica? It's like you're a whore who gets paid in occasional happy thoughts."

  "Fuck you."

  Billy, having already jumped, fallen, landed alive if wounded, hobbles toward the edge of another precipice. "But I care about you," he tells her, immediately despising his voice. "I like you," he says, determined to go forward. "I've liked you since the van ride. There's something about you that clicks. I see you and I feel something snap in place."

  "Sounds as romantic as a dislocated shoulder," Gretchen says.

  "I'm trying to be serious."

  She smiles without affection. "You're sweet."