The Normals

by David Gilbert

  "Fucked-up place," Frank Gershin says from across the table, speaking to nobody in particular, speaking, it seems, to the scars beneath his shirt.

  "Where are you going to get shot next?" Billy asks.

  Frank glances up, startled. "What?"

  "Your next bit of trauma."

  "Not sure. I'm thinking head."

  "Get shot in the head?"

  "Yeah. An Oswald."

  "That'd be a gut shoot. I think you mean a JFK."

  "Yeah whatever. I'm thinking right here." Frank lands his finger in the middle of his forehead.

  "Wouldn't that kill you?"

  "Nothing's killed me yet," he says, getting up.

  The greens, cleared for discharge by way of cashier's check, collect in the courtyard where vans are parked and ready. Corker is there for those heading back to New York, and there are other Corkers who will take people to train stations and bus stops and various points of departure. A few normals with their own cars linger before exiting for the parking lot. It's like the end of summer camp, Billy thinks, or assumes, having never been to camp. Hands are shaken. The rare hug is dispensed. Good-bye to Karl McKay and Stew Slocum and Yul Gertner and Herb Kolch and Frank Gershin and Barry Pica and a host of others, never to be seen again though some make promises and exchange phone numbers, Billy amazed by the mysterious chemistry of friendship. Rodney Letts, blue plastic bag slung over shoulder, spots Billy lurking along the periphery of good-bye. He grins and walks over. Already he's losing his better looks, like he's leaving Shangri-la through a soot-covered duct.

  "Ready for the city again?" he asks.

  "I'm not going back," Billy says.

  "No?"

  "No."

  "Smart of you. Who needs the city except people like me who need people who hate the city so maybe they'll toss me a few coins. I'm like the opposite of a wishing well. But I want to thank you. Your piss saved my butter. Now I've got two thousand dollars, which is like a year for me."

  They shake hands.

  "Do you know this whole study was bullshit?" Billy says.

  "It's always bullshit," Rodney tells him, misunderstanding the question. "But the money's real, and the clean sheets are real, and the showers are real, the three squares a day." Rodney taps Billy on the shoulder. "I'll see you later," he says as if this too is bullshit but at least his hand is real.

  The vans begin filling up. Corker stands arms crossed by the open door, nodding Peter Swain and Sameer Sirdesh inside but keeping his eyes straight ahead, like he's in a staring contest with the AHRC where maybe he thinks a woman is watching him, up from her reception desk and near the window and wondering if she should ask him to pick her up a dozen authentic New York bagels—please please, ask me anything, his dark eyes plead, not even noticing Gretchen who steps inside without looking back toward Billy who is mentally rehearsing his wave, a small sad wave, a wave of what could've been, just a slow raising of his hand, an opening of his fingers, an expression of five, no more, no less, the sentiment running to his mouth (rueful) and his eyes (mournful), but she has to look back or find him from the van's window for this action to commence, Billy waiting as Corker uncrosses his arms and gives the AHRC one more minute to open those doors and unleash a sprinting skirt who's finally come around, one more second as Corker slides shut the passenger door and crosses around the front, glancing back, glancing back, getting to the driver-side door, opening the door, pausing, seeing Billy.

  Billy waves at Corker.

  Corker waves back.

  Billy, with time to kill, decides on a walk down to the Hudson. A well-worn path through woods advertises the river, the water squinting against the sun's highest point. Billy drags along his suitcase. At first, the heat was a novelty, his pores stretching like they've been on the couch for two weeks, but now it's an annoyance of sweat. Air is processed through pine trees and dirt and moss and the underlying mindlessness of water as the path opens up on a stretch of chain-link fence. On the other side is an embankment for train tracks followed by shoreline. The river is narrower this far north but none the less impressive. Billy sees a large brown boy, shirt tucked into his back pocket, standing along its edge. He's picking up rocks and tossing them into the water. He seems to be searching for the biggest splash.

  "Think of the devil."

  Billy turns to find Joy on a tree stump, like a giant toadstool.

  "You were thinking of me?" he asks.

  "Nobody ever bothers to say good-bye to me."

  "There was no bleeding today."

  "Yesterday was the all-clear screen."

  "You should've told me."

  "I thought the removal of the cannula was enough."

  "I should've figured."

  Joy regards him and his suitcase curiously. "You going by boat, or are you swimming home?"

  "I'm being picked up in an hour. Is that the famous Rufus out there?"

  "Yep," Joy says, unable to hold back a smile. "He enjoys attacking the water. But if he slips and gets his toes wet, he'll be screaming."

  "Is it safe with those research-animal hunters around?"

  "They stopped. I guess a few of them were getting overenthusiastic."

  "I saw them dragging out a deer."

  "A bad idea from the start," Joy says. "So you going home?" she asks.

  "Yes," Billy lies. "Just waiting for my ride."

  "Are your parents still going through with it, their thing?"

  "Tomorrow, supposedly. Yeah. Tomorrow is their thirty-eighth wedding anniversary. I'm sure my father loves the idea of dying on that day, you know, too hard to pass up on that symmetry. But today might be the bigger day. Today is the day they ran away from their families and eloped. Tomorrow might be their wedding anniversary, but today is the bigger anniversary."

  "You flying home?" Joy asks.

  "No, I'm taking the train," Billy tells her, thinking she knows he's lying. "But I'll get there in time. I will. I'll get there and stop them." Billy kicking open the door, rushing into their bedroom, slapping the deadly ice-cream mush from their hands, ripping open the plastic from their mouths, fuck it, while he's there laying his hands upon Doris's head and healing her, reaching for Abe so the group hug may commence—all of this lives in the lie as if lying is the lingo of superheroes.

  "That's good," Joy says. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes, crumpled by its intimacy with her thigh. "You want one?"

  "I don't smoke," Billy says, disa—"Screw it." He accepts the pack and excavates a misshapen cigarette, which he strokes straight, then lights, the most pleasing aspect of the smoke. The taste in his lungs is cool and minty, like a choke of ice. It could be a brand of Nordic tobacco. "What is this?"

  "Menthol," she says.

  "It's almost disturbing."

  "Well I like the taste."

  Billy takes another drag. His head is already spinning around a cold peppermint center. "Disturbing in an interesting way," he clarifies, flicking away the dead ash, which is very satisfying, as he flicks again, could flick forever, already impatient with the slow rate of ash.

  "When's your train?" Joy asks.

  "I'm not sure." There are, he finds, at least a half-dozen ways to grip a cigarette, none of which seem ideally suited to his fingers. "So what do you think happens when we die?" he asks with a sort of existential crook of his hand.

  "Either you go to heaven or you go to hell," Joy says.

  Billy can't mask his disappointment. "You really believe that?"

  "I do."

  "So you pray and go to church and read the Bible?"

  "Yep."

  "Jesus Christ as your savior?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "I'm not being critical."

  "You are and that's all right."

  "I don't believe in anything," Billy says, attempting, rather lamely, an effete smoke ring. "But I also don't believe in nothing. I mean, sometimes I think it's just eternal blackness, and sometimes I think if there is an afterlife it's an afterl
ife of your own devising, your last thought, whatever that might be, going on forever. I guess I believe in the great big in-between, nothing as part and parcel of something else. But in general, I'm pretty confused about everything." Billy's voice shakes with honesty and nicotine.

  "You've had a long two weeks," Joy tells him, her eyes a soft pat on his shoulder.

  "I suppose."

  "Your thinking is still wobbly."

  "Maybe that's true." Billy suffers through a thin last drag then he launches the cigarette with a slick disdainful placekick of his fingers, sending the butt over imaginary goalposts. "But I've been thinking maybe I don't need to go home for my parents' deathbed scene."

  "That's cold," Joy says.

  "Positively mentholated," Billy replies.

  "They're your parents," she says.

  "And I'm their son, and blah blah blah. At the end of the day, when all is said and done and Mom, Dad, and Child are old enough to know better, who has the bigger responsibility, you know, who should make the effort to understand and reach out for the other, them or you? Who should go first?"

  "Does it matter?" Joy asks.

  "Absolutely."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know, because it does."

  "It's not a competition, there's no winner or loser."

  Billy distracts himself with a half-buried rock near his left foot, which he toes free, which he then picks up, a good-sized rock with nice heft, jagged from who knows what, a bit of talus from a long-lost mountain, the mountain itself worn down and now rising from the plain of his palm, the ways of geology a mystery to Billy so that what is before him is simply rock, a rock, which, sizing up a tree in the distance, he throws with a decent arm though sports was never an interest, the rock heading toward its target, Billy feeling a certain pleasure in creating speed, in hurling something as fast you can, the rock missing by a few feet, the tree not mocking but perhaps daring him to try again, Billy far too old to take up the challenge.

  "So you'll do nothing instead?" Joy asks.

  "I don't know if it's worth it to do anything else," Billy says.

  "Go home, Billy."

  In this light, the Hudson seems like a giant mercury spill. Rufus, bored with splashes, leaves the shore and storms over the railroad embankment like a boy playing his imagination and he's being chased. He slams into the chain-link fence, thwarted. Fingers poke through the diamond-shaped mesh. The boy is big, football big, but soft enough so his belly strikes Billy as an easy target, a stupa of slaps and jabs which the gentle-faced Rufus must accept without protest, the tenth incarnation of fat. Through the fence, he regards Billy with the suspicion of a boy who knows he's not yet a man.

  "Rufus," Joy says, "this is Billy Schine."

  "Hi Rufus."

  "Hey." Rufus starts climbing up the fence with assurance.

  "Now be careful," Joy says.

  But Rufus is a good climber for his size. He gains the top and lords over the view, teasing his mother with what would be a nine-foot fall.

  "Get down," Joy orders.

  After a beat of protest, Rufus obeys. Halfway down, he jumps and lands with an action-figure pose, much to the delight of his mother who claps her knees Come on over here! Rufus is in no rush. Every step requires an unspoken beg from his mother.

  "Look at you," she says, drawing him in like a club chair. "A chain-link fence you know from back home. It's the rest of the stuff that's alien."

  "I thought I saw a bear," Rufus says.

  "I hope not."

  "Or that Bigfoot guy."

  Joy puts his hands in hers and says, "Worms could live in these fingernails."

  "Have you been smoking?" Rufus asks.

  "No."

  "Hey, could we get a canoe?"

  "I don't think so."

  Joy squeezes Rufus as if invisible claws might tear him away from her, and Rufus pretend-squirms but in the end gives way to her nestling chin. Billy looks away, thinking this deserves privacy, this expression. He glances toward his hands, with something like shame.

  "You've been smoking," Rufus says.

  "Maybe a little bit," Joy admits.

  How do you recover from who you are? Billy wonders. How do you come to grips with the facts of yourself? How do you ever accept the diagnosis?

  "I'm hungry," Rufus says.

  "Maybe we should get some doughnuts and milkshakes."

  Rufus hops up. "That would be beautiful."

  "You want to join us?" Joy asks Billy.

  "I can't," Billy says.

  "You have plans?"

  "Only immediate."

  Joy gets up and prepares for reentry into civilization. "If you find yourself needing a place to stay, I don't know, for the next few days, we have a pullout. It wouldn't be a problem." "I think I'll be fine."

  "Well, just in case." She comes over toward Billy, reaches for the ballpoint pen clipped to her lapel. No paper readily available, she takes his arm. For the first time her touch is latex-free. She extends his elbow, revealing the red prick where the cannula once lay. "Like old times," she says. The ink is stubborn to start. Ballpoint digs into skin. "I can't find a vein," she jokes. Finally, ten digits are traced and retraced, and Joy clicks her cheeks with satisfaction. "Call us if you need something," she says, standing over him like an eclipse.

  "Thanks for everything," he says.

  "I didn't do anything but my job."

  "That's true, I guess."

  "Go home," she says, her eyes on him like hands brushing away rubble.

  "Yeah."

  Joy corrals Rufus for their return to the AHRC.

  Billy hears Rufus ask, "What's he doing there?"

  "He's waiting for the train," Joy tells him.

  "Train doesn't stop here, does it?"

  "I don't think so."

  "So why's he waiting?"

  "I think he's been misinformed."

  Billy takes in the water, the blue sky, the few clouds, the sun, the every-so-often airplane slicing a thin white contrail that slowly distends into an intestine of vapor, the trees, the random breeze, the branches like creaky playground swings, the birds, the heat, the dirt, the smell, the heat on pine and mulch, the no-see-ums, the bugs, the ants, the mossy green, the brown, the red suitcase, the pose, the bullshit tableau, the chain-link fence, the train tracks, the rocks, the shore, the small waves lapping back on the lone figure taking this all in.

  Billy gets up.

  He goes over to where he flicked his cigarette and pockets the filter.

  Midway along on the path, like a vision from a dream, odd and ordinary, a dog is spread on all fours. Billy freezes. It's a mutt, mostly black Labrador with a white chevron of Ur-canine on its chest. Billy wonders if the dog has seen him, but it seems unfazed, mouth open, tongue dangling wet. Strapped on its back is a saddlebag, the nylon torn and dirty. Billy is curious if the dog is still receiving its automated dose, if the external infusion pump still works in the wild, churning away its noncure. Billy lowers his suitcase. The dog perks. Its ears seem broken, as if as a puppy they met cruel thumbs. "Hey boy, hey boy," Billy calls out. The dog tilts its head, commercial cute. Billy crouches down, pats his knees, clucks sweet nothings. "Come on, come here, boy, come on, yes, you big beautiful dog, you good dog, yes, come here, come on." The dog is not tempted while Billy is a surveyor of possibilities. He fantasizes about stealing this dog away from here. His mind's eye travels the country with this diseased, drugged-up dog, the two of them inseparable. Screw Honeysack, screw Gretchen, screw his parents, he'll be devoted to this dog. "Come here, boy." The dog gets up and shakes. Billy turns up his cooing and approaches, hand available for sniffing. "You sweet thing, good dog, good dog." The dog watches Billy with deep brown eyes, impassive, like Coca-Cola gone flat. Twenty feet away, now fifteen feet, and Billy is already thinking of names. Doug, he thinks, Doug the dog, from Douglas, meaning black water. "Hi, beautiful." A straightforward, single-syllable American name. "Yes, you good good dog, yeah." Billy ten feet awa
y and the dog flexes its nostrils. Breathe me in, Billy thinks. Take in this reek and render it your own. Billy floats forward on soft entreaties of "Hey." Close enough now to notice a bit of white around the muzzle, an older dog, perhaps once a pet, Billy is ready for a lick when the dog turns toward the woods and begins walking. It walks without haste. On a rotted tree it shows itself male. Then it keeps walking into the deeper part of the woods, trailing behind a loose rubber tube from the infusion pump, like a leash from a lost owner. Billy doesn't budge until the dog disappears. There goes a new species of animal, he thinks.

  40

  BILLY SITS in the courtyard, in the shade of the HAM sculpture, his back leaning against bronze like the hand is a tree to laze beneath. The finger is still three hours slow. Maybe there's a day when the time's just right, when the earth is on a particular rotation, when the sun is in conjunction with a gesture and somewhere the sculptor smiles. But not today. Today, thoughts of death are lifted toward the sky. Today, death might die. Who said that? Somebody else, Billy thinks, in so many words, those words no doubt better chosen. Billy closes his eyes. He imagines his head pressing the pulse of the statue, the great big nothing of this monument. He tries feeling for a sign of life, even if a faint echo from where the rhesus monkey scampered. Oh well. No great revelations, only mild pretension. At least the bronze is warm.

  Billy is almost asleep when the largest SUV he's ever seen comes tearing down the AHRC driveway. This SUV seems to have swallowed another SUV. It screeches along the curve and stops not with a skid but an extended high-pitched whimper. The passenger window rolls down. Dr. Honeysack waves toward Billy like this car is an embarrassing costume.